the Greater Good
by Kiana Unei
Summary: The Dursleys become fed up with Harry's wizarding skills, and returen him to the cupboard. Then, a midnight visit sends he and Sirius Black on a hunt for a mysterious artifact that will lead them strait into the heart of Azkaban. . .
1. Part One: the (sort of) Ordinary World

The Greater Good  
  
By Kiana  
  
The summer after Harry's fourth year, the Dursleys become fed-up his wizarding skills. They lock him in the cupboard and plan to send him to Stonewall- until a midnight visit sends Harry on a hunt for the Crest of Isis. For anyone who wants to see a fight between Pettigrew and those he slighted, or see the Dursleys meet Sirius Black!  
  
Everything belongs to J K Rowling except Isis, Sonna Ibse, the Shieena, and a few random idiots. If I were making any money from this, I wouldn't be writing this disclaimer.  
  
  
  
Chapter I:  
  
The Last Straw  
  
The sun was just beginning to reach the lowermost side of his window when Harry was rudely awakened by a loud crash and the sounds of his rather porkey cousin, Dudley, bawling at the top of his lungs.  
  
"B-b-but you said we could go to the FAIR!" the boy whined loudly from somewhere downstairs- probably the kitchen, as that was where he spent the majority of his waking hours.  
  
"But, Diddydums," Aunt Petunia insisted, "What can we do? We can't just leave HIM in the house alone- goodness knows what state we'll find it in when we get back!"  
  
By 'Him', Harry knew they were referring to he, Harry Potter. Though outsiders might have found it to be mean and down-right disgraceful, Harry was used to the Dursleys behaving as though he were something nasty and disgraceful. This treatment had doubled since he had started Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, when his aunt and uncle had added 'abnormal' to the list of things wrong with him.  
  
"But I don't care if he's here alone," Dudley protested, "just lock him in the cupboard, or something."  
  
"And risk the wrath of that murdering godfather of his?!" Uncle Vernon sounded like something being run over.  
  
Harry smirked into his pillow, knowing full well what was going on in the minds of those downstairs. Should they chance Harry being unattended for many hours? Take him along and just let Dudley cry about it? Or . . .  
  
His smirk turning very rapidly into a wide grin, Harry reflected that Sirius Black had become a valuable asset in his daily negotiations with the Dursleys over matters such as chores, privileges, and where he slept.  
  
"POTTER!!" Uncle Vernon bellowed up the stairs.  
  
Harry climbed out of the old bed, kicking his sheets onto the floor by accident. He wondered vaguely if he should tell Dudley that Sirius would want him to pick them up for his younger cousin.  
  
Downstairs, only Vernon was standing- Petunia was sitting on one of the wood framed chairs with Dudley on her lap. Harry found this rather ridiculous, as the fifteen-year-old was so large that it was a wonder he didn't crush her.  
  
"Yes?" Harry asked, wondering which choice they found the least horrible. Uncle Vernon was a bright purple colour, closely resembling a large, red onion.  
  
"This has gone far enough, boy," he said, trying to keep his composure.  
  
"What has?" Harry asked. So far, he didn't see anything he'd done wro-  
  
"THIS WHOLE BLOODY WIZARD RUBBISH!!" Vernon exploded. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF IT! ALL OF IT!"  
  
This was not one of the options Harry had predicted, and for a fleeting moment he wondered if he was, after all, going to be sent back to the cupboard under the stairs. Sirius wouldn't like that . . .  
  
"Excuse me?" Harry said, "I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, but I do need to go back upstairs and finish my letter to my godfath- "  
  
"YO'LL DO NOTHING OF THE SORT!" Vernon raged. "Your abnormality has been causing this family grief for nearly five years! I'm putting my foot down! No more MAGIC," he spat, like an obscenity, "no more ruddy owls screeching in the middle of the night, and NO MORE SIRUS BLACK!!"  
  
"It's 'Sirius'," Harry said coldly. Rant and rave though he might, Vernon was digging himself into a trap. If Harry couldn't write to Black, then his godfather would get worried and think that something was wrong.  
  
His uncle looked about to pop. He thrust a finger at Harry, started to say something, stopped, then stood there seeming quite unsure what to do. Harry blinked at him calmly, waiting.  
  
When nothing else happened, he shrugged, turned to go back upstairs, and said lightly, "Right, then. Can I go?"  
  
"OH, NO YOU DON'T!!" Uncle Vernon pushed past him and charged up the stairs, leaving Harry standing dumbstruck in the parlour.  
  
There was the thin sound of glass breaking, followed closely by several heavy thumps. Harry just barely managed to restrain himself from dashing up the stairs to make sure the sounds weren't coming from his room; if they were, he thought grimly, then the Dursleys would have to explain it all to Sirius.  
  
After a bit, Uncle Vernon pounded back into the living room. "You," he said, pointing at Harry, "go to your cupboard."  
  
Harry stood where he was.  
  
"DID YOU HEAR ME?!" Vernon shouted  
  
Harry tilted his head to the side, looking calmly up at him. "You know, if you don't let me write to Sirius, he'll start to think you're mistreating me."  
  
His uncle turned a pale shade of green. "Well, then," he stammered, then regained control, "if he shows his bloody face around here, I'll have to call the police!"  
  
"The police?" Harry said scornfully, "Against a fully-trained wizard?" He had forgotten for a moment that Sirius didn't have a wand with him- but then again, Vernon didn't know that.  
  
"Get . . . going," his uncle hissed between his teeth. Harry sighed, knowing it would only be a matter of time before . . . well . . . something happened.  
  
* * *  
  
Harry spent almost a full month in the cupboard waiting for that something to happen. He wondered if something had happened to Sirius, if he'd been caught . . . or killed. Thinking about what might have befallen his godfather made Harry feel very sick, and the mental pictures that scrolled by only made it ten times worse.  
  
Most likely, he kept reminding himself, Sirius was starting to get worried, but hadn't yet formulated a plan on what to do about it.  
  
By the end of July, the Dursleys were obviously beginning to think that they were out of Sirius Black's reach. Uncle Vernon began whistling the same tune over and over when he left for work in the mornings, and Aunt Petunia began handing Harry as many chores as she had back before he'd known he was a wizard. Dudley couldn't resist pointing out Black's absence whenever he saw Harry, but never did get back into his old habit of using him as a punching bag.  
  
Harry was feeling more and more depressed as the days wore on. At least he had Hogwarts to look forward to, in Septembre. But then one morning, during breakfast, Aunt Petunia said lightly to her husband, "Well, they've accepted him."  
  
"Accepted who?" Dudley asked, through a large wad of bacon and eggs.  
  
"Him," Petunia said.  
  
"Who's accepted me?" Harry asked.  
  
"Stonewall," Uncle Vernon grunted, without looking up from his paper.  
  
"WHAT?!" Harry spat out his eggs, gaping at them. "But I can't- I mean- I go to Hog- "  
  
"I told you I'd had enough of that nonsense," Vernon growled.  
  
Furious, Harry shoved himself out of his chair and marched back to his cupboard, head spinning. It was no use trying to go to his room, as his uncle had boarded it up weeks ago.  
  
'Dear Sirius,' he mentally composed, 'the Muggles locked me in a cupboard and tell me I'm going to a Muggle school next year. They say I'm not allowed to write to you, and that I can't be a wizard. Please come and turn them into wombats. Yours, Harry.'  
  
The idea made Harry feel better.  
  
Early the next morning- or late that night; Harry couldn't tell- there was a sort of a loud banging noise coming from somewhere outside his cupboard. At first he had thought it part of his dream, but then he heard Uncle Vernon's pounding footsteps, followed by his aunt and Dudley.  
  
"Ruddy morons . . . at this hour," he heard Vernon grumble as they passed his cupboard. For a wild moment Harry hoped it was Sirius Black, but no, more likely the mailman inquiring about a letter sent to Harry, like the time right before his fourth year at Hogwarts.  
  
"WHAT THE DICKENS DO YOU WANT?!" he heard his uncle bellow, opening the front door.  
  
"Mr Dursley?"  
  
"What?!"  
  
"I'm here to ask about your nephew, Harry."  
  
"There's no one here by that name!" Vernon roared, "Who the devil are you?!"  
  
A long pause, then the man replied, "Harry's godfather, Sirius Black."  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter Two:  
  
A Message from Gwynnadale  
  
"EEAAHHH!!!"  
  
There followed another crash as the Dursleys tried to scramble back from the doorway, guard Dudley, and slam the door. By the sounds they were making, Harry guessed that they had accomplished not one of these tasks.  
  
He could here Dudley's heavy footsteps pounding through the house, and the back window sliding open. Moments later, Dudley squawked, "ARRGH! I'M STUCK!"  
  
More sounds of struggling, then-  
  
"STOP!!"  
  
The Dursleys quit banging around and stood very still at the sound of Sirius' sharp tone. Aunt Petunia was crying something below Harry's hearing range.  
  
"Thank you. . ! That's better," Sirius said, and the front door closed. "Now, where's Harry? He isn't sick, is he?" He actually sounded concerned, Harry thought. That wasn't something he was used to, living with the Dursleys.  
  
"I'M IN HERE!!" Harry shouted through the cupboard door. Moments later, the wooden panel was yanked open, and Harry clambered out, brushing spider webs from his hair.  
  
"Wha- " Sirius Black, barely visible in the dim lighting, looked him up and down. "What were you DOING in a cupboard, Harry?"  
  
Freed from his cupboard, Harry looked around, spotted Dudley's fat bottom hanging out of the back window, and his aunt and uncle quivering in terror on the floor. Harry, who had been fanaticizing about this very moment since he had returned from Hogwarts his third year, gave his godfather a whimpering look, trying to seem as pathetic as possible.  
  
Sirius, who was staring at the dark opening, apparently realized that the lock was on the outside, because he turned slowly around to face Vernon and Petunia.  
  
"You didn't lock him IN there, did you?" His voice was soft and dangerous; his face was bathed in darkness.  
  
"They did," Harry said. "They told me I was going to a Muggle school from now on, and I couldn't be a wizard, and they wouldn't let me out, and they wouldn't let me write to you."  
  
Sirius Black loomed over the Dursleys, seeming every bit the murderer he had been convicted as. "Is this true?"  
  
"N-n-n-NO!" Vernon gasped out, "H-Harry was looking for- for spiders, and, er, the door must've locked on accident- "  
  
Sirius dropped to his knees, grabbed the collar of Vernon's shirt and yanked the trembling man right around to stare him coldly in the face. "DO YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT RUBBISH?!" he roared, "SPIDERS?!? HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE SPIDERS!!"  
  
Petunia screamed, clawing at Uncle Vernon's arm. Dudley, still stuck in the window frame, kicked his legs and bawled.  
  
Harry watched Sirius' shadowed face turn even darker. Though he relished the idea of the Dursleys being spiders, he would feel awfully guilty about banishing them completely from the human world. "Sirius, don't! They're not worth it. Leave 'em be," he said.  
  
Sirius turned to stare at him, then angrily jabbed a finger at Vernon and Petunia. "Harry, these- these filthy, disgusting, pathetic excuses for human beings don't deserve- "  
  
"HELP!" Dudley wailed. "Help! I'm stuck! I can't feel my legs!"  
  
For the first time, Black seemed to notice him. "Who is THAT pudgy balloon?"  
  
"Dudley," Harry said, and Aunt Petunia screamed again.  
  
"NO! LEAVE MY POOR BABY ALONE, YOU FOUL, MURDERING FREAK!!"  
  
Sirius rounded on them. "AND NOT HARRY?! FOR ALL YOU SEEM TO KNOW, I COULD BE AFTER HIM!! DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT HIS POOR BOY AT ALL?!"  
  
Sirius whipped a hand into his robe; drew it out a fraction of a second later. Now, clasped tightly in his right fist- so tightly that his knuckles were turning white- was a long, slender wand. He aimed this right at Mr Dursley.  
  
"SIRIUS, NO!!" Harry grabbed his godfather's arm, causing the wand to point harmlessly at the carpeted floor.  
  
Sirius stared at him, started to say something, then stopped. "Harry, they- "  
  
"They're not worth it. Come on," he pulled harder on his godfather's sleeve, turning him towards the door.  
  
But Sirius turned back to the Dursleys. "Harry," he said, "maybe you should wait outside for a moment."  
  
Harry hesitated, watching his aunt, uncle, and cousin all but wet themselves in terror. "But- "  
  
Black looked at him for a long moment, then his face relaxed. He walked over to where Dudley was hanging half in, half out of the back window. Sirius grabbed him roughly by one chubby leg and hauled him back inside, ignoring the boy's frantic whimpering.  
  
He pointed his want at Vernon and Petunia, keeping it leveled as he crossed back to where Harry was standing.  
  
Then, less than a metre from Harry's aunt and uncle, Sirius jabbed his wand fiercely at them, and hissed, "If I ever find out that you've done anything to Harry like this again, I swear that regret it for as long as you lived."  
  
With that, Harry's godfather lowered the wand and motioned for the boy to follow him out into the night.  
  
  
  
A/N: This is the first-ever serious Harry Potter story I've begun, so PLEASE tell me what you think. Should I continue or stick to comedy? Thanks to star magic, draca weasley, Willowstar, and opheliac for reviewing that one, by the way! 


	2. Part II: the Call to Adventure

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana  
  
Look at the first part if you wanna read the summery . . .  
  
Sorry this took a bit to upload, but I've been buisy with the normal teenage life- school, homework, Karate, home life, helping my mom move into a new place, saveing the world from the Keebler Elves . . . you understand.  
  
Thank you for reviewing the first chapter and prompting me forward -------- !  
  
Dis not mine. Nope, nope, nope. J K Rowling owns Harry and his world. I haven't the faintest who owns the Keebler Elves, maybe some guy named Keebler? If anyone owns Isis, it's the Ancient Egyptians. All I have is Sonna Ibse, Serita Maelani, many random idiots, Gwynnadale, the Shieena, two cats, a snake, a brother . . .  
  
  
  
Part II  
  
A Message from Gwynnadale- continued  
  
  
  
"Borne of fire, Carved from stone  
  
Made of ice, Shaped by bone."  
  
The dance of the flickering fire seemed to work in time with the chant, leaping and cracking, sending out glowing sparks to emphisize the drummer's beat.  
  
"Willow break, Ash will burn  
  
Waters flood from ancient urn."  
  
The pounding footsteps from above ground faded slightly; the dancers were slowing. Inside the barred pit a pair of human eyes flicked briefly about the cage, taking in the many tonnes of packed dirt and rock, and, in the centre of the floor, a grate that covered some unfathomal well of darkness.  
  
"Waii kalita si sirra ti tunista!" one of the Shieen cried- and the sounds from above abruptly vanished. They were gone.  
  
A roar echoed from within the depths of the well, deep-sounding and ominous. Something was comming.  
  
"Stay away from the grate," the murderer whispered.  
  
"Shut up." But she moved back anyway, always staying on the opposite side of their prison from him.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
"Sirius. . . ."  
  
"They're fine, Harry. But if there's a next time, they won't be." They walked in silence for a while, heading down a side street leading off of Privit Drive. Under the flickering street lights, Harry felt strange walking along next to Black, as if the man was somehow part of a dream, and would fade away just as quickly.  
  
He felt comfortable in both the Wizard world and the Muggle world, but it seemed odd to have a part of one world meld into the next. When he pictured his godfather, the image did not include the distant roar of street cars, and warm yellow lamps hanging overhead.  
  
Harry's stomache growled suddenly, and he realized with a jolt that he hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday.  
  
Sirius glanced down at him. "You too? . . .There's a place not too far away that I know of, care to give it a try?"  
  
"Sure!"  
  
Black switched directions, leading Harry down one alley and up another, weaving his way through the dimly lit streets with an ease and knowledge born obviously from experience.  
  
Surprised, Harry asked, "Have you been here before?"  
  
"Yes," his godfather replied, "I got to know the . . . less public places of your village while I was trying to figure out how to go on about contacting you. I had no idea your aunt and uncle. . . ."  
  
"Oh." Harry said. No wonder Sirius had taken a while. But then again, what did he expect- Black to come bursting in the door, wand blazing, attracting loads of attention from Muggles and wizards alike?  
  
"Sirius, where did you get a wand, anyway?"  
  
"I didn't," the man replied, and the light of the crescent moon illuminated the quirky grin on his face, "I imagined, though, that one would probably be quite useful. . . ."  
  
He handed it to Harry, who, to his surprise, dicovered that the 'wand' was in fact just a long, slender, fairly strait twig.  
  
"Actually," Sirius admitted, "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't insisted on leaving them be. Spiders, heh."  
  
Harry grinned back- then frowned. "Sirius . . . I forgot all my stuff at the Dursley's. What am I going to do when school starts again?"  
  
"Well," Black said after a long pause, "well, I suppose we'll just have to go back and get it."  
  
"Then I'm staying with you?" Harry looked hopefully up at his godfather.  
  
But Sirius shook his head. "Harry, I'm on the run from the Ministry. I'm living as I can get by; dodging every thinking being from houselves on up. I don't think you should stay with me longer than absolutely necessary. If someone should see you in the company of an infamous convict. . . ."  
  
"I don't care," Harry said stiffly.  
  
Silence returned for the remainder of their walk, leaving Harry to the quiet of his thoughts  
  
  
  
Sometime later, he found himself outside a small diner with the name "Gwynnadale's" written across the top of the door frame in peeling white letters. Sirius ran a hand through his matted hair, attempting to straiten it, and brushed a bit at his robes.  
  
Harry stared at him in blatant disbelief. "You're going in as- ?"  
  
"As myself? Yes. I had the misfourtune of being hit accidentally by an Anti-Transfiguration charm near Cambridge. I'm lucky to have made it here."  
  
"But you can't- " Harry motioned to the diner.  
  
"Trust me- I have no intention of getting myself killed." Sirius waited while Harry flattened his hair over his scar, then the two of them pushed through the old door and into the diner.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter III:  
  
Capture  
  
  
  
Immidiatly, Harry realized why his godfather wasn't worried about being spotted. Ragged, too worn robes and long coats seemed to be the trend here, as if Gwynnadale's were the waystation for the homeless, and escaped convicts. Sirius fit right in.  
  
"Oy, Vladimir!" someone called out. Harry felt himself colour a bit in the cheeks- they were probably talking about what a kid with taped glasses, wild hair, and a faded robe, was doing in a place that could have passed for a pub.  
  
To his surprise, Sirius jerked his head up, looking for the source of the voice. A corner of his godfather's mouth twitched upright in an attempted smile, and Harry, feeling lost, followed him to a corner of the room.  
  
"Nathanial," Sirius greeted the man. "My nephew, Ronald." He jerked his head to indicate Harry.  
  
Nathanial glanced at him, then turned again to Sirius. "Vladimir, where've 'ou been up to? I was startin' ta think you'd dodged out."  
  
"Ny, it's against my principles to betray friends." He had adopted an accent that Harry wansn't framiliar with- something not quite Brittish, but not quite forgin.  
  
The other man let out a loud, boisterous laugh, and clapped Sirius roughly on the shoulder. "Aha! A man of principle! Tess- " a waitress looked up "-bring something for my friend, on me. And f'r 'is nevew, too."  
  
Harry gave a wan smile of thanks, and figited in his chair. He had only felt this out-of-place once before: when he was the fourth, and youngest, champion of the Tri-Wizard Tournament last year. It was not a welcome feeling, especiallly since Harry was still worried that he and Sirius would be discovered.  
  
A plate of kippers, chips, and roast chicken suddenly appered in front of him, taking Harry's mind away from his line of thought. He had never smelled anything so wonderful, and had to swallow several times before reaching for his fork.  
  
"So wha's sa kid's story, anyways?" Nathanial asked.  
  
Sirius forced what seemed to Harry as a painful laugh. "Terrible troublemaker- always getting into a spot at the orphanage. I of course wanted to take him, but the headmistress wouldn't allow it. 'Wouldn't be good f'r him,' she said. Appearently, Ron got all bent 'round about somethin', and ran off. He found me, and I've been taking care of him since."  
  
"Ah." The man looked like he was going to say more on the subject, but didn't. "He in?"  
  
In what? Harry wondered, as both men turned to look at him.  
  
"No." Sirius looked quite decided on that, and said firmly, mostly to Harry, "No, he's going to stay with his friends for the remainder of the summer."  
  
"Yes I am," Harry agreed, grabbing hold of his godfather's stained sleeve. Sirius gave him a hard look, which Harry returned stubbornly.  
  
"No, he is too young; it is too dangerous." Black said, while looking at Nathanial.  
  
"I want to help fight Voldemort." Harry insisted, because he was sure that was what this was about.  
  
"I'm not just going to sit around and watch," he said, meeting his godfather's light eyes determitly. "I may be a kid, but that doesn't mean I'm helpless, or stupid. You heard what Dumbledore said- I've had a grown wizard's burden thrown upon my back; I can handle myself fine, thanks. Look at what's happened to me at Hogwarts! And last year- look at what happened then!"  
  
Nathanial stared at Harry as though he'd gone mad. Then, slowly, his eyes flicked up to trace the framiliar lightning-shaped scar, half-hidden by the boy's hair.  
  
"Bloody hell . . ." he murmured, "Is this . . . it CAN'T be . . . Harry Potter?"  
  
"I wish," Harry snorted, mentally cursing himself for his stupidity. "Harry Potter doesn't have an uncle, does he? I thought he lived with some Muggles."  
  
"No . . ." Nathanial was still openly staring at him. "No, he doesn't have a wizard uncle, but. . ." He turned to look sharply at Sirius. Harry felt his stomach turn to water.  
  
"Where'd you get . . . him?" he asked.  
  
"Rescued him," Sirius said, accidentally letting his accent slip back to his normal, slightly Scottish dialect. "From the Muggles. I'm taking him to live with some friends of his."  
  
"How'd you meet him?"  
  
"In Hogsmeade. Near his school."  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"What?" Sirius' face took on a surprised, insulted look. "Vladimir Thomas, you met me three nights ago!"  
  
"What happened to yer accent?" Nathanial looked suspiciously at him.  
  
"It vanished into the Fourth Dimintion, along with all my socks." Harry noticed with a jolt that his godfather was barefoot.  
  
"What?" Nathanial looked blank.  
  
"Muggle thing . . ." Sirius sighed, looking very weary.  
  
"Are you . . . I thought-" Harry looked at him.  
  
"What? Oh. I'm half-blood. Muggle father. Plus one of my best friends was Muggle born." He rested his head against a hand, staring distractedly into the dirty, soot-choaked fireplace.  
  
On impulse, Harry shifted his weight, leaning up against his godfather. It was a very child-like act, and he imidiatly felt foolish for it. Harry straitned, and found Nathanial staring at him again.  
  
"Harry Potter, the Boy who Lived," he said, in either real or mock reverency- Harry couldn't tell. "Never thought I'd be meeting you. Nathanial Wesson, drunken, soon-to-be-rich thief at yer service." He made a lavish, sweeping gesture with his hands, then turned to face Sirius.  
  
"And, surprise, surprise, Vladimir Thomas, poor acter and powerfully dark wizard. 'N't that right, Black?"  
  
Sirius jumped, sending his cup spilling across the wooden table. The liquid soaked into the cracked surface, spreading almost to toutch the handle of the wand Nathanial held pointed toward the fugitive's chest.  
  
"I may not have murdered thirting people, Black, but make no mistake- if either you, or whoever this kid is moves, I will kill you. Understand?"  
  
Slowly, Sirius nodded.  
  
"You can't, he's inno- " Harry's protest was cut short by the insertion of another wand undernieth his jaw- also held by Nathanial.  
  
"Told you I was a thief, didn't I, boy," the man said, in a tone a parent might use whilst correcting a misbehaving youngster. "As soon as you sat down I took the precaution that you might object to this arrest."  
  
Harry stared at the weapon. He didn't have his wand with him, so if the Nathanial . . .  
  
Sirius must have reached the same conclusion about the second wand; his hand snapped forward, striking the other's face, then snatched the wand- like twig still pointed at him out of the man's grasp.  
  
Nathanial cupped his hands about his broken nose, using his weathered thumbs to wipe the tears and blood away from his eyes. Then with a yell he threw himself at Sirius, catching the man on the side of his jaw. The stick flew out of his hands, skittering harmlessly (yah think?)across the floor.  
  
He landed another punch against the convict's ribs- Sirius stumbled and slammed his back against a nearby table, landing on it hard as the legs gave way.  
  
The few other occupants of the diner scattered away from the fight; Harry picked up someone's half-empty goblet and brought it down hard on Nathanial's head- to his dissapointment the man failed to lose consiousness. Instead, he grabbed Harry by the collar of his shirt and tossed him away like a stuffed toy.  
  
Harry scrambled to his feet in time to see both his godfather and Nathanial yanked apart by several people dressed in uniform green robes- Hit Wizards.  
  
"Stop it! Stop it! Break it up, you two!" The woman planted an arm across Sirius' chest to keep him from going after Nathanial again- which was just fine for Sirius. What little colour he had gained back from Azkaban had already left him as he spun around, attempting to make the exit.  
  
"Hold it right there!" A wizard stopped him, grabbing him by his long- since-ruined tunic. "You an' this bloke here are gonna shake hands, got it? And- HOLY SHIT!!"  
  
"Well- it's a shirt actually, but, yes, I s'pose it does look like shit." Sirius broke into a cold sweat, knowing very well that the man wasn't talking about his tunic.  
  
"He- he- he's SIRIUS BLOODY BLACK!! Oomph-!" Harry had tackled the wizard, knocking him to the ground.  
  
A second Hit Wizard grabbed him around the waist, yanking Harry upright.  
  
"STUPIFY!"  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: Sorry that's all, but my brother wants to use the computer RIGHT NOW. I promise to get another chapter uploaded within the week. I really LOATHE cliff-hangers, so don't expect me to use many (if at all) more. This just seemed like a (Yes, Nick, just a minute!) good place to stop, as Harry gets knocked out. And about the first part- you'll see.  
  
By the way, you'll see why it was called a 'message from Gwynnadale', too, in the next part. 


	3. Part III: the one I put up before I had ...

the Greater Good  
  
by Kiana  
  
  
  
You should not read this without reading the first two parts. The summary is in the first part. Okay?  
  
I don't legally own anything. The end.  
  
Thank you so much for reviewing! Yes, I know the story is a little weird- but please, it IS my first serious story. It's bound to be a little odd. And yes, it's my story, but I'm happily open for ideas on what would make it better. Merci beaucoup!  
  
(by the way, I'm titleing the parts of this from Cambell's 'Hero with a Thousand Faces' breakdown of the hero's journey. Why? Because I'd rather do that to study for the English test than write out something like: Ist part of the journey: ordinary world, second part: call to adventure, ect.)  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter II: (continued)  
  
Capture  
  
  
  
"Ow!" Harry rubbed his sore knuckles with the palm of his other hand, then lashed out at the offending metal bars with his shoulder, throwing himself against it.  
  
"I wouldn't do that, kid," the read-cloaked guard said, a hint of amusment gleaming behind his dark eyes.  
  
"Let me out!" Harry shouted at him.  
  
"Cheese?" the prisoner next to his cell asked in a high-pitched, demented sort of voice.  
  
Harry stared at him for a moment, then resumed his plea, "Let me out! Let me OUT of here! You can't put a kid in Azkaban anyway!!"  
  
"Kid," the guard said wearily, "you were found aiding Sirius Black. That's a serious offence, you know." The man blinked twice, then shook away the 'Sirius/ serious' conflict. "But you might not go to Azkaban, it depends on what the court thinks."  
  
Harry sighed, and settled back against the stone wall of his cell. What would happen to him now? Probably not Azkaban- as soon as he managed to convince them that he was THE HARRY POTTER he'd most likely be let off entirely. But then what? The Dursleys would be all too happy to know that he'd been in prison, and that they were out of danger from Black. Harry put his head in his hands.  
  
"What about Sirius?"  
  
"CHEESE!!"  
  
"What about the bloody git?" the guard asked.  
  
"What'll they- er- they won't send him back to- to- "  
  
"Azkaban?" Harry nodded. "Nope. Heard he's in for the Dementor's Kiss."  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
"Let me g- !" Sirius drew in his breath sharply, feeling his insides turn to ice. Dementors.  
  
The two Hit Wizards serving as some kind of sadistic escorts grabbed him roughly by the shoulders, keeping Sirius moving through the long hallway. He stumbled, dragging his bare feet on the deep russet carpeting. Carpet the colour of blood.  
  
At this thought, an acidic wash of panic swept over the man- Sirius dug his heels into floor, momentarily halting their progress.  
  
"Get going," one of the wizards hissed, bringing the hard edge of a baton across the prisoner's shoulders. Sometimes Muggle weapons did have their uses.  
  
Black staggered forward, wincing, then tripped over his feet. The two Wizards were on him at once, dragging him upright none too gently.  
  
"You punch like my little sister," he mumbled, bringing a hand tenitively to his split lip. Goon Number Two rammed his fist into Black's stomache; Sirius crumpled like a broken toy for his half-emanciated state. " 's a complim'nt," he weezed, gagged, then managed to draw a shallow, shaky breath.  
  
Apparently, the men were getting tired of playing tug-of-war with the infamous convict. Goon Number One grabbed him under the elbows, hauling him upwards again.  
  
They marched him forwards, towards the stained oak doors of the Ministry's exicutionary.  
  
Sirius tripped himself again, landing hard on the cold floor less than half a metre from the end of the hall. He was dragged the rest of the way.  
  
"Get up."  
  
"How? You've got my hands chained behind my back." This was a dream, Sirius thought. It has to be a dream. I'm going to wake up as Padfoot somewhere; I'll be okay.  
  
He was hit again with the baton, and then in the ribs by Number One's smelly old boot.  
  
"Get up."  
  
"Want a last request." he told the unusually clear-focused, soft, red strands of the carpet.  
  
"What."  
  
"Give me a trial first."  
  
"Request denied. You woldn't ask if you didn't think you could weasle you way out of justice again."  
  
Sirius let out a slow breath, listening with hightened sences to the sounds the air made against the plush carpet. He had just run out of options.  
  
"All right. Give me a chance to speak. When I'm done you can . . . we can walk through that door."  
  
"Fine."  
  
Sirius struggled into a seated posistion, took a few breaths, and then began his tale of the Marauders, Remus the werewolf, and Pettigrew the betrayer. He made sure to leave out the part of being an Animagus, though, just in case the Wizards believed him and he was released.  
  
They did not.  
  
So Sirius continued his Last Speach, stalling for time, and launched into the worst concert anyone, Muggle or wizard, ever had the misfourtune of hearing.  
  
  
  
Chapter IV:  
  
"I think it would be a good idea."  
  
"Sirius Black has just been captured, Sir!"  
  
The Minister of Defence shot Mr Wesson a hard look. "Again? The whole mission is bloody pointless if it's not him, you understand."  
  
"Yes, Sir." The Auror was still dressed in the drab garb he had worn at Gwynnadale's, and looked in desperate need of a long soak. "But this man reacted to the verbal suggestions I threw at him, and did act much like his determined psychology would suggest."  
  
"Determined psychology is not proof of anything. What some hard- headed, white-collor neuroscientist comes up with as a reasonable behaviour pattern for an escaped criminal could very well be a perfect match for every other poor bugger on the streets. Further, did this 'determined psychology' take into account the probability of insanity?"  
  
Wesson started to say something, then stopped, realizing the truth to this.  
  
"Well, where is he?" the Minister sighed. He stood, with the bering and poise expected of someone in his position, and followed Nathanial Wesson from his office. "One more thing, though. This one doesn't say 'cheese' all the time, does he?"  
  
"No, Sir, he's actually quite rational."  
  
They rounded a corner, and came face to face with a bizzar sight. Two rather irritated-looking Hit Wizards stood in front of the exacutionary's oak door, and between them sat a tattered-looking wizard singing his way shakily through the Beetles' "Yellow Submarine".  
  
"All right, enough," one of the Wizards snapped, and attempted to drag the (intoxicated?) man to his feet.  
  
"Let me alone, I'm not through yet," the man argued hoarsley.  
  
"You've had long enough."  
  
"A, b, c, d, e, f, g, Eric the half-a-bee," he managed, and then, thankfully, his voice seemed to fail.  
  
"What the hell is this?" the Minister of Defence demanded.  
  
The seated man answered in a strained gasp, "They won't let me finish my Last Speach."  
  
" 'Last Speach'? You sang yourself hoarse, from what I can tell. Who are you?"  
  
" 'The renegade, who had it made, retrie'- "  
  
"Shut up!" one of the Hit Wizards snapped, interrupting the prisoner.  
  
"He's Sirius Black," Wesson said, startled. Black looked up at him, then glared fiercley.  
  
"Nathanial, you son of a- "  
  
"Enough!" The lighter-haired Wizard clubbed the man hard with his baton, knocking him to the ground.  
  
"Black, eh?" The minister looked skeptical. "We'll see. Stand him up."  
  
The man was yanked roughly to his feet. The Minister of Defence circled around behind the two Wizards, snatched up the back of what remained of the prisoner's collor, and tore it down over the man's right shoulderblade.  
  
"Hey!" he protested, struggling to keep his balance.  
  
"What's that mean?" Wesson asked, pointing. Sirius twisted his head back, but didn't see anything of noticable intrest. Other than, of course, several jagged scars- nothing new.  
  
"Prisoner number," the minister said. "Congradulations, Wesson. You've actually captured Sirius Antony Black."  
  
"I have a prisoner number?" Sirius asked.  
  
"Took us long enough to catch him. About bloody time." the minister continued, ignoring him.  
  
Wesson stepped up to Sirius, smiling superiorly. "So, what do you think of Ministery Intelligence now, Black?"  
  
"I think it would be a good idea," he spat.  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: What? You didn't think I was going to call him Sirius Lee, did you? My story's already much too goofy. Remus Jay Lupin would be interesting, though . . .  
  
I'd like to have put up more, but I wanted to finish before I had to go to class. I will put up more within the next two days, if not today. Again, thanks so much for being encouraging!! Also, the computer I'm working on doesn't have a spell check, which is bad. At least Nick is sleeping right now . . . 


	4. Part IV: Refusal of the Call

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
Summery on part I. No read part four until you read part I. Common sence. Thank you.  
  
  
  
Nothing in the story is mine. Harry and his world belong to J K Rowling. I am making no money from this.  
  
Thank you, nice people!!  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter IV (continued):  
  
"I think it would be a good idea."  
  
  
  
  
  
The room was dimly lit, hard, and had only two chairs. The Minister of Defence was seated on one with that slimey imposter, Mr Wesson, to his left. Sirius Black was on the floor; thick, unbreakable chains wrapped around both his wrists and his bare ankles.  
  
"All right, Black, I'm going to be blunt with you," the minister said. "As of this moment you have two choices: One, I can summon the Dementors, and you'll be no more than an empty shell. As good as dead. But I must warn you, the process is extreamly painful, especially if you're still partly sane."  
  
Sirius gave them a dark look. He had been threatened with the Dementor's Kiss enought times in Azkaban, and by people who couldn't care less about whether he was actually given it or not. This bloke, on the other hand, seemed to find this alternative as the least attractive of his 'two options'. "And the other . . ?"  
  
"You help me out by retrieving a valuable Egyptian artifact."  
  
"What do I look like, Indianna Jones?"  
  
"Beg pardon?"  
  
"Nothing," Sirius mumbled. He shifted uncomfortably. "Why me?"  
  
"Because," Wesson paused her for effect, "the Crest of Isis is located in a maze of catacombs benieth the fortress Azkaban- "  
  
"No way!" Sirius jerked back invoulentaraly, shaking from memories.  
  
Wesson continued, "-and you would be rather inconspicuous. We've already captured you, we could turn you back over to the Dementors, you could escape and recouver the Crest."  
  
"And then what? You rescue me and let me go? Pardon me?" His heart was pounding in his throat. The slightest reflection of a light long since dead flickered on behind his pale, haunted eyes.  
  
"Heavens, no!" the minister said, chuckling. "Let you go? Let you return to society? I wouldn't dream of it. No, you compleat this task, and we'll make sure you die quickly and without pain."  
  
Sirius' eyes darkened again. If eyes were indeed windows to the soul, then his had just been pulled closed. "So if I refuse, you kill me. If I help, you kill me anyway, is that it?"  
  
"It's not IF you die," Wesson said in a parental voice, "it's how you die that counts. Black, from the moment you were captured your death was unavoidable. But the means is up to you: Dementors, or night's leaf potion?"  
  
"Why me?" he said in a deadened monotone. "Why not just recall the Dementors and go in there yourselves?"  
  
Wesson and the Minister of Defence exchanged glances. "Well . . ." Wesson said, "well, removing the Dementors would increace the chances of another escape. Besides, it would no doubt draw attention, and the last thing we want is more of your friends on our hands, trying to figure out why you've been captured, but the Dementors have been exiled. They might try to help you escape."  
  
Sirius smirked, for the first time since he could remember. The idea that the Death Eaters would try to help him do anything was preposterous, and the fact that the two idiots in front of him actually thought they would only added to the irony. Smiling, even stripped down to a dry grin, hurt after so long.  
  
"So why not put one of your own people in there?" he asked. Again, Wesson and the minister exchanged a glance.  
  
"Because we haven't yet figured out how you've managed to stay sane. Placing an Auror, even Mad-Eye Moody himself, into Azkaban is as good as killing them." The minister looked as though this were obvious.  
  
"How 'bout this," Sirius said, hoping for Luck to finally smile on him, "I give you my secret on keeping one's head- you can even veritas me- and you give me a trial."  
  
"I don't think so." The Minister shook his head to emphisize his point. "But I'm not going to argue with you about alternatives, Black. Here are your choices: either help us, or don't."  
  
"Either way I'm dead," he said in a low voice. "So I really don't see the point."  
  
"Very well," the minister said, looking much like he were dealing with a screaming two-year-old over whether or not she could pick up a worm and eat it, "how about this: you help us, and you get one favour before you die quickly and painlessly."  
  
"A trial."  
  
"No. You only want one so you could bend the law into your likeness."  
  
"All right- give me truth serum, then ask me if I've ever murdered anyone. If the answer is anything other than 'no', you can kill me."  
  
"Do you really think I'm that stupid, Black?" the minister asked. "You've got something up your sleeve, so-to-speak. Some spell that'll make you answer questions in your favour."  
  
Sirius racked his brain for a way out of this situation. He could probably escape Azkaban again, but then he'd only be back on the run. Still, it was better than death.  
  
"All right," he agreed, "I help you, and you let Harry live with the Weasleys, rather than his aunt and uncle."  
  
"Beg pardon?" He had apparently surprised both men with his answer.  
  
"Harry. My godson. His relitives hate him; let him live with his friends, the Weasleys."  
  
"Who are the Weasleys?" the minister asked, looking suspicious. "Friends of yours?"  
  
"Only their youngest son, Ron," Sirius answered.  
  
"Weasley? Arther Weasley?" Wesson asked. "Poor, red hair, lot of children?"  
  
"Yep."  
  
"Who?" the minister asked again.  
  
"Arther Weasley works for the Ministry, in the Department of Something-or-other. Something to do with Muggles- the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts, I think." Wesson looked surprised.  
  
"Check them out," the minister ordered, "if they're okay, grant his request. If not- "  
  
"Let Harry live with Remus Lupin." Sirius answered.  
  
"If not," he continued, giving Sirius a dark look, "check out Remus Lupin. If HE doesn't work, request denied. Agreed?"  
  
"Agreed," Sirius said.  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter V:  
  
Deneb Procyon Black  
  
  
  
"Try this." The red-cloaked guard tossed Harry a bottle of soap, and a wash cloth.  
  
"Thanks." Harry began scrubbing at his scar, as if soap and water could actually remove it.  
  
"How'd you get caught up with Sirius Black, anyway, kid?"  
  
"Oh . . ." Harry pretended to drop the cloth, stalling for time. ". . .He's my, er, he's my -my father."  
  
"Wow. Quite a bit to live up ta, eh, kid?"  
  
"Er- yeah." He was, of course, not getting anywhere on trying to remove his scar, other than starting to hurt himself. "Bloody stupid spell," Harry mumbled.  
  
He had switched tactics; now, instead of trying to convince the guard that he was THE Harry Potter, Harry was attempting to get close enough to his godfather to help him escape. THEN he could let people recognize him as who he really was.  
  
"This isn't working." Harry handed the cloth and bottle of soap back through the bars. "Thanks, anyway."  
  
"Yer welcome, kid. Funny, you seem too nice to be, well, his son." The guard was warming up to him, Harry thought happily. Seemed a hard-luck case was easier to get help than someone claiming to be the Boy Who Lived.  
  
Harry shrugged. "Yeah, well . . . you know how it is. What's your name, Sir? You seem too nice to be a guard."  
  
He laughed. "Yeah, well, you remind me of my son a little. He'd be about your age, now."  
  
"Sir?"  
  
"Deneb . . . His mother took him when we . . . devorced." The guard sighed heavily, staring off into space.  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
"So am I, kid. How 'bout you, you got a name?"  
  
"Er, yeah . . . Procyon. Black. Yeah."  
  
" 'Procyon Black Yeah'?" The guard grinned slightly. Harry laughed.  
  
"What's . . . Where's Sirius? My father?" Harry quickly ammended. If he were going to pull this off, he'd need to start behaving like Sirius' son.  
  
"I don't know, kid. Probably in the exicutionary by now." He actually looked slightly saddened.  
  
"Oh." Harry's heart was pounding very fast. "Could I, you know, see him?"  
  
"I don't see why not," the man smiled slightly at Harry. "I bet he'd like to see you before he died. I would."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: Sorry it's short, again, but I wanted to get this up before Nick wanted to use the computer to try and find "AGAIN" Azkaban Fortress. Or maybe now he's on to Hogsmeade. So sorry, I couldn't convice him that it's not real! Hopefully I'll get the rest of chapter five up today or tomarro, and then you'll see what the whole deal with "Message from Gwynnadale" and the start of the chapter was about. Again, thanks so much for being nice! 


	5. Part V: the one I uploaded whilest liste...

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
Not mine. None of it. No money is being made from this.  
  
  
  
Procyon is the name of Canis Minor's (little dog's) brightest star, by the way. Just like Sirius is the name of Canis Major's brightest. How did Harry know this? Dunno. Astronamy class, maybe. But I know, isn't it an awful name? Harry was under pressure at the time though. Nick suggested it. I HAD to use it- I owed him for not telling our parents where I hid my report card!  
  
Surprise, surprise, Nick did not find Azkaban Fortress.  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter V (continued):  
  
Deneb Procyon Black  
  
  
  
  
  
In a perfect world, the Minister of Defence could arrange for the best make-up and costume designers of the Muggle world (magic is too easy to detect) to come in and make it look as though Sirius Black had put up one hell of a fight to escape; that is, smear mud on his face a bit, use fake blood, and so fourth.  
  
Then again, in a perfect world Sirius wouldn't have to play the role of the recaptured villian.  
  
He coughed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Stupid, bloody sadistic freaks, he thought bitterly.  
  
"Need a hand?" Mr Wesson asked.  
  
"Yes." Sirius glared at him, knowing full well that the man hadn't really intended to be of any help.  
  
"Well," Wesson glanced him over, but didn't make a move to be of any service, "you couldn't just waltz back into Azkaban, now could you?"  
  
"Why not? Last time I didn't so much as scruff my feet on the way to the island."  
  
"Yes . . ." Wesson looked thoughtful. "But the less you attract attention, the better."  
  
Sirius started to say something about what Mr Wesson could do with his fear of extra attention, but was interrupted by the opening of the room's single door.  
  
"Aha," Wesson said, looking relieved, "Ms Maelani, may I present to you Sirius Black?"  
  
"THIS is Sirius Black?" Her blonde eyebrows raised slightly.  
  
"What, too charming?" he asked, grinning- then winced, and let it go.  
  
"No, too relaxed." Maelani studied his face with the screutany acceptable for a jewler studying a prized diamond, then quickly took in the rest of his battered physique.  
  
"Okay, Black, I'm going to ask you a few questions, and I want you to answer honestly and to the best of your ability. Understand?"  
  
"Yeah." As long as they're nothing personal, he thought. Or my secret of escaping Azkaban . . .  
  
"Fine!" She seated herself across from him, gray-green eyes flashing with- eagerness? "What is your name?"  
  
"Sir Lancelot of Camelot." Sirius answered confidently, managing to keep a strait face.  
  
"Beg pardon?" Maelani looked startled.  
  
"Okay, you're pardoned. How 'bout me?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Mr Black," Wesson sighed, ". . .please."  
  
"She knows my name," he growled. Wesson gave him a dirty look, which Sirius returned. "Fine. I am Sirius Antony Black, eldest son of Elizabeth and Richard Black- "  
  
"How old are you?" Maelani interrupted.  
  
"Dunno. Somewhere in my thirties, I'd guess." If Harry was fifteen- or was he? Drat, he'd have to know today's date. If Harry was fifteen, that'd make Sirius . . . let's see . . . One year plus twelve is thirteen, thirteen plus two was fifteen . . . How old was he when he was taken to Azkaban? If James was eighteen when he married Lily, he must've been about nineteen when Harry was born . . . twenty when Harry was a year old . . . nineteen years older than Harry . . . Thirty-three, or thirty-four, depending on Harry's age. Maybe. When was Sirius born, again?  
  
"Do bannanas chew blowing-gum?"  
  
"Huh?" Sirius was startled out of his thoughts.  
  
"Mr Black, answer the question," Wesson ordered.  
  
"Er . . . no, they don't. Not that I'm aware of, anyway."  
  
"Can you discribe," Maelani continued, "to the best of your ability, your feelings regarding colours?"  
  
" 'Colours'? Erm, yeah . . . without colours, the world would be a pretty dull place . . . rainbows wouldn't exist . . . kids would fail art . . . I wouldn't have a last name . . ."  
  
She seemed satisfied. "Mr Wesson, through my oppinion, and the oppinions of NeuroTech, Mr Black is hereby judged sane, in all senses."  
  
"Thank you," he said. NeuroTech? What the hell was that? He filed the name away for later investigation. "And by the way, Ms- Maelani, was it?- if you weren't so cold, you might be considered rather attractive."  
  
"Excuse me?" She favoured him with a cold glare, then turned back to Wesson. "Sane, but deplorable."  
  
"Understood. Thank you, Doctor." Wesson said.  
  
Doctor? NeuroTech? The Minister of Defence trusting a notorious convict to play Indianna Jones on a secret mission not even trusted to specially-trained Aurors? Something was going on, something big. And Sirius Black hadn't the faintest inkling as to what it might be.  
  
"Meester Wessoh?" A French contralto broke through Sirius' ponderings.  
  
"Yes- ? Oh, Ms Ibse, I didn't see you there!" He, too, looked startled. The woman stood just to the side of the door, perfectly still, as if she had been there for an indeterminable time. He face was, like Sirius', absolutly void of expression. Unlike Sirius, though, her gaze seemed due to absolute calm, rather than having been crushed into stillness. Her face unnerved both male occupants of the room.  
  
"Ms Ibse, this is Sirius Black." Wesson figited slightly with the pressed collor of his shirt.  
  
" 'ello," Ibse offered. She, too, seated herself opposite him. ". . . 'Ow do you feel? Uncomf'table, nervoos, cold?"  
  
"Actually, yeah," he stared at her. "Et vous? Ca va?"  
  
"Oh!" Her face broke into a slight grin- but, also like Sirius, the look did not reach her eyes. "Bien. Vous parlez francais?"  
  
"Uh . . ." he drew his thumb and first finger together in the universal guesture of "a bit".  
  
"C'est bien. Je m'appelle Sonna Ibse." She pronounced it "SO-na eb- SAY", which Sirius thought sounded much nicer than the way Wesson said it. But maybe that was only because he took an imidiate likeing to her, and detested Nathanial.  
  
"Um . . . porqua, wait, no, er . . ." Okay, what are the words? THINK. "POURQOI . . . Merde. Je ne sais pas les mots."  
  
Sonna laughed. "Is okay. Me, je took forever to learn anglais."  
  
"That's nice," Wesson interrupted, "now please, use it. No French- speak. I want to be able to understand what the bloody hell you're saying to eachother."  
  
"Vous etres tres stupides, n'est-ce pas?" Sirius said to him.  
  
"Vous 'etes'," Sonna corrected.  
  
"Merci."  
  
"Enough!" Wesson was getting red in the face. "Ms Ibse, I take it that Black's safe enough to rely on, since you won't stop talking at him! Dismissed."  
  
"Yes, sir." Sonna rose and left the small room; Sirius was actually sorry to see her go.  
  
"Bloody psychic freak," Wesson mumbled.  
  
" 'Psychic'?" Sirius blinked up at him.  
  
"Yes. 'Psychic'." From his expression, Sirius could tell that the subject was closed.  
  
"Now prepare yourself, Black," Wesson said, grinning slightly, "tomarrow will be a very buisy day!"  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
" 'Not there'?" Harry stared up at the red-cloaked guard.  
  
"I'm sorry, kid," the man said. "They must've brought him in early; didn't want to chance him escaping, I guess. He's gone."  
  
Harry felt the base drop out of his stomache. Gone? Gone?! GONE?!! He had been fifteen years old for nine hours now. Happy Birthday, Harry, you're now officially an orphan.  
  
"What?" he asked timidly. There's some mistake, there's got to have been some mistake!  
  
Cold shivers ran up and down his arms, legs, and spine. There was no mistake. None at all. Sirius Black was gone. Forever.  
  
He sat down on his knees, leaning up against the cold hallway wall, and cried.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: Why is it that when I sit down to write something always comes up? "Clean my room or else!" Got to go- Nooooo! Argh! Hopefully I'll be able to get more up today. This stupid computer not only doesn't have spell check in English (or in French, by the way) but it won't let me put accents over letters, so the French part of this looks really weird! Darn! Oh, well, hopefully those of you who understand French will know what I meant. For those of you who don't, pretty much what their conversation was was ('~' two was's- argh!) this:  
  
Sirius: And you? How are you?  
  
Ibse: Oh! (I'm) Well. You speak French?  
  
Sirius: Uh, a bit.  
  
Ibse: That's nice. My name is Sonna Ibse.  
  
Sirius: Um, (not a real word), wait, no, er . . . WHY . . . S***. I don't know the words.  
  
Sirius (to Wesson): You to be very stupid, are you not?  
  
Ibse: You 'are'.  
  
Sirius: Thank you. 


	6. Part VI: Meeting with the Mentor

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
Lessee. . . how many different ways can I say this? Harry no mine. Belongs to J K Rowling. Too bad. But you're probably rejoicing because it isn't mine to mess with.  
  
  
  
My computer stinks. No spell check, in English or otherwise. No accents for letters. Please don't take this lack out on me!  
  
  
  
Again, thank you so much for being nice!!  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter VI:  
  
A Nessicary Evil  
  
  
  
Harry didn't know how long he stayed there, curled in a fetal position on a chair near the exicutionary. After his innitial outburst, he had managed to quiet himself down, biting hard on his fist if needed.  
  
It wasn't fair! They had murdered an innocent man; murdered him without a trial. Harry felt a painful, empty void settling within his heart like a miniature black hole, worse than the hundred Dementors he had faced in third year. Because this time, the chill was comming from inside himself.  
  
He glanced sideways, blinking back pain and dried tears, towards the lonely oak door that had sealed the fate of the only person in the entire world he ever remembered loving. Sirius was dead, and what was worse, he had died because he had gone after Harry.  
  
Harry turned his head slowly back to gaze blindly in front of him, at the blood-coloured carpet. How appropriate.  
  
"I'm sorry, kid," the red-cloaked guard whispered.  
  
Harry blinked. He hadn't realized that the man was still there.  
  
"You . . . have a mum what can take care of you?"  
  
"No." Harry wrapped his arms tighter around his knees. Of course you don't have a mum, a nasty little voice at the back of his mind whispered, she died trying to save YOU. You killed her, and you killed Cedric Diggory, and now you killed Sirius. Turn yourself in to Voldemort. End it now, before you kill anyone else. You're a curse to the people who love you.  
  
But Harry didn't know where Voldemort was. Tears welled up behind his eyes again, though he didn't make a move to wipe them away.  
  
A door down the hall opened, and Harry watched numbly as some bloke wearing a minister's traditional green dress robes made his way towards them. He stopped when he noticed Harry.  
  
"Who are you?" The man took in Harry's faded hand-me-down shirt, worn bathrobe, and too-large shorts rolled up to his knees bareing the letters B.U.M. He had often reffered too his 'new' shorts as "Dudley's bum's"; Harry only wore them when he had no other choice, for obvious reasons.  
  
"You a- a Muggle?" the minister peered suspiciously down at Harry.  
  
"No." Harry wet his lips, wiped the back of his wrist across his nose, then mumbled, "I don't know. Maybe now. Don't know if I wanna go back."  
  
"Eh?" the minister glanced at Harry's guard.  
  
"Black's son," came the quiet, soloumn explanation. "He wanted to see his father before he died. We were too late."  
  
Harry was vaguely aware of the minister uncomfortably shifting positions in front of them. " 'Son'?"  
  
"Aye."  
  
The minister swore softly. "I wasn't expecting this. Complications . . . How old?"  
  
"Dunno. Fourteen, I'd guess."  
  
"Go to school?"  
  
It took a moment for Harry to realize that he was the one being addressed. "Yeah. Hogwarts," he mumbled. Don't cry, not in front of everyone!  
  
"You know any useful spells?"  
  
"Stupify," Harry pretended to have an itch on the bridge of his nose, giving him a chance to run his thumb across his eyes. "Accio. Expelliarmus. Expecto Patronus."  
  
"The Patronus?" the Minister sounded shocked. "You any good?"  
  
"Yeah. I guess."  
  
"What's your name?"  
  
"Har- " Harry turned his cock-up into a wreched sob, "Deneb." He glanced up at the guard, "Sorry. I didn't wanna tell you, after what you said about . . ."  
  
" 's all right." The man looked longingly for a moment at Harry, then turned away.  
  
"Come with me." The minister tapped Harry on the head to get his attention. Slowly, the boy worked his way to his feet, wondering if, perhaps, he would now share the fate he had forced his godfather into. Harry flattened his hair over his scar.  
  
  
  
"This is Azkaban's high security level," Wesson aimed his wand at the schematics tacked up against one wall of the white-washed room.  
  
"No shit," Sirius grumbled. The twisting hallways and ghostly illuminating windows of the dreaded fortress had long since been burned behind his eyes; Sirius needed no further reminder of the place.  
  
"You will most likely be placed within this level, Black, so make sure you know where you're going. Now, Azkaban does have a lower level- "  
  
"A dungeon," Sirius interrupted in a flat voice.  
  
"-but the catacombs are located almost a kilometre below. You will need to take some sort of light- a lantern, perhaps, because the path from the lower level is surrounded by deep underground pits."  
  
"How 'bout I take a wand?" Sirius asked, "Lanterns don't work forever, you know."  
  
Wesson ignored him. "I can't help you find a light, so that's something you'll have to work out on your own.  
  
"At the bottom of the path is the entrance to the catacombs; beyond that- well, let's just say you recouver the Crest, and make your way back to the lower level."  
  
"The dungeon."  
  
"From there, you will present either Minister Reiton or myself- "  
  
"Minister Who?"  
  
"Reiton. You've met him." At the prisoner's blank look, Wesson ellabourated, "-The Minister of Defence . . ?"  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Yes, as I was saying, from there you will present either him or myself with the artifact."  
  
"And then . . ?"  
  
Wesson made a jerky motion across his throat with his right hand.  
  
"Oh. You commit suicide. I don't blame you." Sirius turned his attention back to the other two members seated at the table, Doctor Maelani, and Sonna Ibse- the latter of the two had a vague smile brushed over his lips. Sirius hoped it was because of his stupid joke, and not because she couldn't wait for them to get to THAT part of the plan.  
  
"Any questions, Black?" Wesson asked.  
  
"Yeah . . . First, how the hell are you going to know when I'm back in the dungeon?"  
  
Wesson raised a small, red object that looked much like a jewl. "You will use this to send a direct signal to an identical one in Minister Reiton's possesion. The password to activate it is up to you."  
  
"Okay. Second," Sirius continued, "what does this bloody Crest thing look like?"  
  
"It's a golden ankh; I need go into no further detail."  
  
"Fine. Third- what does NeuroTech have to do with this?" The last question had the most pronounced effect- Wesson and Maelani looked shaken.  
  
"How does he know about- ?" Maelani hissed.  
  
"I didn't think he'd remember- " Wesson intterupted, looking livid, then composed himself and said to Sirius, "That is of no concern to you. Your job is simply to get the Crest."  
  
"Tell me." Sirius demanded, "Besides, Ministry secret missions are safe in my hands- who the hell'd believe me? And if you're planning on killing me anyway . . ." He raised an eyebrow.  
  
"It's just a precaution, incase you do somehow manage to escape, that you know as little about the working of the Ministry as possible." Wesson stated firmly.  
  
Sirius glared darkly at him, then said, "Fourth- why a psychic?"  
  
"To make sure you were reliable, and to stop you incase you got the wise idea to run for it after you escaped your cell."  
  
"How?"  
  
"There are ways, but I suggest you not find out. It was Ms Ibse's sister, by the way, who sent you that vision."  
  
"Vision?"  
  
"You remember. The pit, the dancers, the creature in the well? A message, if you will, to not attempt slipping away from us."  
  
Sirius had been caught off guard by this, and sat in silence, thinking over his options. Follow their lead and die, or get his soul taken away. Damnit.  
  
"Mr Wesson."  
  
The four turned to find the Minister of Defence standing just inside the doorway, looking ill.  
  
"Yes, sir?"  
  
"We've got another card to play- Black's son."  
  
Sirius jumped internally. Son?  
  
"Son?" Wesson asked. "Oh! That kid."  
  
"Harry?" Sirius gaped at the man.  
  
"Deneb. I said 'son', not 'godson'." The minister motioned, and behind him, Harry Potter wandered dejectedly into the light. His face was wet and turned towards the floor, and there was a nasty purpleish bruise couvering the first two knuckles of his right hand.  
  
"Harry?"  
  
The boy raised his face slightly, then stared in blatant disbelief. "Si . . ?" was all he managed to get out, as the man wrapped him in a tight hug.  
  
"Are you all right?! I thought you'd be at home by now!" Sirius held him out at arm's length, studying his face. "What happened?"  
  
"I- I thought you were dead! We looked at the executionary- but you weren't there- and I'm glad- want me- this thing- Azkaban- said no- and they- they said they'd- " His string of words cut off and Harry burried his face in Sirius' shirt, gasping between dry sobs.  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: That's it for now, Nick's gotten tired of watching old Monty Python episodes and is begging for me to get off so he can make a phone call. I swear, he only wants things when I'm on the computer. 'Tis a conspiracy. Ah, well. By the way, I think this is the darkest the story's gonna get. 


	7. Part VII: Crossing the Threashold

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
Harry and his world are not mine. Harry and his magical community belong to J K Rowling. The rest of the world is on sale now for 2.95 at your local dealer. But bring gloves! There is a war going on! Which is kinda scary! I'm hyper right now! I like these thingies"!"!! No, actually, I don't preticularily!!! I'm never messing with billywig stings again!! Haha!!  
  
  
  
Wow, I never thought so many people would like my work! Usually Mom's silent except for 'that's nice, sweetie', Nick would rather do something else, and I can't show Harry Potter to dad because he hasn't read the books. My cousin's over now, too. He thinks Harry Potter is childish. ('~')  
  
But anyway, thank you so much!  
  
And by the way, even though a Howler would be interesting, either regular or extra crispy, please refrain from sending me any. Sirius has agreed to Wesson's plan, so he's out of danger from a Dementor's Kiss. Plus you'd burn down my Dad's house.  
  
  
  
(WARNING: ther is no spel chek on ths computer. No accents over letter, either. Also, to make matters more . . . irritating . . . the drachma key is busted. Donno if you noticed, but there should have been a drachma (Greek currency) sign before 2.95. Just pretend there is.)  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter VII:  
  
the Prisoner of Fate  
  
  
  
  
  
"Harry- I want you to promise me something."  
  
Harry turned from the filthy window of the old boat to face his godfather. "What?"  
  
"That you won't run off and get yourself killed." Sirius' pale eyes, crystal blue with a ring of the deepest green, took on an even more haunted look than usual.  
  
"I won't."  
  
"Harry . . ." Sirius gave him a Look, something akin to the death glare he had perfected during his years imprisoned in the 'Dark Fortress'. "I know you probably won't intentionally, but, well, you do have a knack for attracting trouble."  
  
"Yeah." Harry returned his gaze to the window, stareing out at the open ocean. The morning sun was just barely topping the gray waters, sending prisms of colour through the spray swept up by the small ship. Judgeing by the position of the sun, Harry guessed that they were heading north- far, far north.  
  
"I can't believe they're sending a kid to Azkaban," Sirius grumbled almost inaudiably.  
  
"Not as a prisoner," Harry pointed out. "I'm supposed to be a sort of caretaker."  
  
"Still . . ." Sirius let his sentance die unfinished. The island was a place of horrors; it could have passed as the tenth level of Hell.  
  
Memories he had tried time and again to banish surfaced; Sirius changed both his line of thought and the subject. "Harry, do you have any idea what NeuroTech is?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"No, I was asking you."  
  
"Oh. No."  
  
Such witty dialouge, Sirius thought. Harry must go quiet when apprehension rears its ugly head.  
  
"Hey, Harry, ever hear the one about the race between these two fellows working for enamy governments?" Sirius pulled his gaunt face into a half-actualized grin. Harry shrugged, keeping his gaze at the window.  
  
"Okay, so there was these two fellows, let's say- an Auror and a Death Eater. And they have a foot race. The Auror wins.  
  
When the Death Eater gets back to old Voldey-McMouldy, he's understandably afraid to admit his defeat."  
  
Here, Sirius' voice took on a raspy, demented tone, " 'Well, my brainless servent, how did it turn out?' "  
  
And then a high-pitched snivle that sounded much like Wormtail's, " 'Well, my lord! I came in second, and the Auror came in next-to-last!' "  
  
He waited for Harry to laugh. Or give his godfather a withering look. Or do anything at all.  
  
"See, 'cause Voldemort didn't know that there were only two atheletes."  
  
"Oh." Harry's mouth worked a few times, then he said, "Is . . . Azkaban mostly square, with some turrents?"  
  
Sirius made a noise of agreement. Then his pale eyes widened- "Why?"  
  
"No reason," Harry said quickly, turning away from the window, "just wondering."  
  
Sirius reached his hand through the bars separating them and gave Harry's shoulder a small squeeze. "It'll be okay, kiddo. I've got a plan worked out."  
  
"You do?" Harry's face brightened.  
  
"Yep."  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
Azkaban was exactly how Harry imagined it would be: cold and forbidding. He was horrified of the Dementors, dispite the fact that the creatures did not use their icy powers on any of the freemen- the few humans who worked there. Old fears die hard, he supposed.  
  
Sirius, too, stopped his attempts at being funny upon his first step onto the rocky cliffs; Harry wondered how he felt, returning to this place.  
  
The guards, hard-faced and dressed in robes of burnt siena, were waiting when the two passengers of the little boat emerged. Sirius was apprehended at once, his arms twisted roughly behind his back and chained at the elbows. Heavy manacles bearing the Azkaban crest were slammed over his wrists, and simmilar restraining devices tied about his ankles. His face was unreadable- a defence mechanism of burrying emotions that left him looking hollowed-out. Surprisingly, his deadened eyes were flickering with life for the first time Harry could remember- with a deep and firey rage. Harry realized with a jolt what this was doing to his godfather, and how close he actually was to toeing the line of psycosis. It scared him.  
  
"Come with me, boy."  
  
The speaker was a mean-looking woman standing off to the side, looking slightly bored. Obidiantly, Harry wandered over to her.  
  
"My name is Captain DeForteangn. I am in charge here. Azkaban's never had a caretaker before, and if you step out of line, you're out of here. Understand?"  
  
"Yes, Ma'am." Harry felt strangely cold, and sick at heart.  
  
"Yes 'Captain'."  
  
"Yes, Captain."  
  
She looked contemptuously at him, like she were putting up with letting Peter Pettigrew into an All-You-Can-Eat buffet. "You will report to work at four in the morning, eat breakfast at four fourty-five, lunch at two, and supper at eight. I don't want you disturbing either the guards or the prisoners. You be in your quarters at eight thirty, and be quiet."  
  
"Yes, Captain." He was reminded strongly of Uncle Vernon.  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter VIII:  
  
Desperate Attempt at Mind Games  
  
  
  
His fear of the Dementors amused one of the younger guards, a fellow named Brian, who actually wasn't that much older than Harry.  
  
"Aww, is ickle Denny scawed of the ickle Dementows?" Brian joked, retrieving the pail and mop Harry had dropped when one of the things passed by.  
  
"You're not?" he asked.  
  
"Naw. You get used t'em after a while." Brian watched as the boy struggled with the filthy floor, a floor that probably hadn't been washed since Azkaban was built. " 'Eard you almost fainted when you first saw 'un."  
  
"Did not," Harry said crossly, and Brian laughed. "Don't you have guard duty to do?"  
  
"I am." the man replied, "I'm guardin' you from hittin' your head if you faint."  
  
"Shut up." Harry stared at the area he had just washed. "This floor used to be white?"  
  
"Naw, it used to be pink," Brian had a stupid smirk on his face, "with cute little hearts and bunny rabits on it."  
  
Harry swung the mop in his direction, making the guard stumble backwards to avoid a snootfull of dirty water.  
  
"Why can't I use a wand?" Harry mumbed, rubbing his sore arms.  
  
"They're afraid you might lose it, and one of the convicts might get hold of it."  
  
Harry swore mentally, thinking that would have been the perfect way to free his godfather.  
  
"Speakin' of convicts," Brian said, "hey, Deneb, guess who we caught?"  
  
Please let it be Pettigrew, please let it be Pettigrew, please let . . . "Who?"  
  
"Sirius Black!"  
  
"Oh, right." Darn, Harry thought, disappointed.  
  
"Wanna see him?"  
  
"Sure!" Harry said, "Er- yeah, all right." He followed the man through the gloomy, tourch-lit hallways, deeper into the heart of Azkaban, his heart pounding with apprihension. It had been less than a day since they had arrived, but Harry still missed his godfather sorely. He had also seen the look in Black's eyes when he was taken away, and didn't know what to expect of him now.  
  
Brian stopped outside of a dark space; it took Harry a moment for his eyes to adjust, and then he came face-to-robe with two greusome looking Dementors. Harry stumbled back in fear, making his 'guide' laugh.  
  
"All right, blokes," Brian said, "outta the way, go haunt somewhere else." Surprisingly, not only did the Dementors not give the cocky human the Kiss, but they actually glided off down the darkened hall. Brian beckoned Harry into the dark, square-shaped shadow the monsters had just abandoned.  
  
He obeyed, walking forward, and smacked his nose and forehead hard against two metal bars hidden by darkness. Brian laughed, again.  
  
"Are you all right?" Black's voice sounded shakey, comming from the depths of the shadow.  
  
"Sirius?" Harry asked, squinting, and rubbed his abused nose.  
  
"I'm here."  
  
Blindly, Harry felt between two of the bars, reaching into the cell.  
  
"Watch it," Brian warned.  
  
Harry felt Sirius take his hand, and felt a rush of warmth displace the chill of the Dementors. Sirius was okay. So far.  
  
"Hey!" Brian yelped, grabbing the back of Harry's cheap-issue brown uniform, tugging him backwards. Harry held onto his godfather's unseen hand, gripping him like a life-line.  
  
"Let me alone! It's all right!" Harry said.  
  
"Like Hell it is!" Brian succedded in pulling the boy away, then spun him around to face him. "What in all of creation do you think you're doing?!"  
  
"Er-" Harry racked his mind for an acceptable explanation, and came up short. "Er- sorry." he managed.  
  
"Well, I should hope so!" Brian ranted, "Merlin's bloody beard! That has to have been the single most STUPID thing I've ever seen ANYONE do! And that includes the nutter prisoners! You tryin' to kill yourself?!"  
  
"No," Harry answered meekly.  
  
Brian glanced at Sirius, whom Harry could just make out leaning against the bars of his cell, watching them.  
  
"You're lucky he didn't KILL you!" Brian said, shaking Harry by the shoulders. "Don't you EVER do that again!"  
  
"Okay," Harry agreed glumly, as the young man hauled him away from the darkness of the High-Security level.  
  
  
  
Outside, the setting sun seemed painfully bright. Orange and mauve- tipped clouds floated lazily across the quickly darkening sky, reflecting the glow of the ocean swells. Iceburgs jutted up from the fridged water, giving off gusts of wispy fog as the warm southern wind stuck their peaks. Harry shivered inside of his uniform, watching his breath dissapate into the northern sky.  
  
Ironic how such a terrible place could have such a breathtakingly enchanting view.  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
Harry made his way down the steep, angular cliffs of Azkaban, feeling his way gingerly over the rocky path leading to the tied-off hoppers. He hadn't arrived by the sleek, hovering boats, but Harry had seen them work in the moving pictures displayed in 'Magical Transportation and Spells for Keeping them Working'- a book Ron had barrowed long ago from the Hogwarts library. Harry stongly suspected that Ron had yet to return it.  
  
A sharp rock caught him just behind his toes, making Harry utter an obscinity he had heard his godfather use in times of crisis. He hopped forward in the half-light, holding his injured foot, and tripped over something invisible to his eyes.  
  
"Ouch!" He reached behind himself, feeling his way over a cold, somewhat smooth cylindrical object. Part of a smooth branch? Harry felt along to the end, traceing the outline of where the branch split into five shorter sections.  
  
A cold surged within Harry's insides. He fumbled in the darkness, drawing away from the horrifying thing- a human arm, severed halfway to the shoulder. Harry swallowed hard, trying not to be sick.  
  
Get to the hoppers, get to the hoppers, get them and steal one for you and Sirius, get to the hoppers. Don't think about anything else. Hoppers, hoppers, hoppers, hop-  
  
A ragged flap of clotheing about the dead arm posessed an inscription, sewn on with silver thread: Neurological Technologies Inc.  
  
Harry stared. What had Sirius said about a Neuro-Tech? He tilted his head sideways, reading the rest of it.  
  
Neurological Technologies Inc. "To better ourselves for the good of Mankind!"  
  
Underneith was a slip of filthy parchment, which Harry remouved gingerly.  
  
"Read and then Distroy.  
  
Programme failed.  
  
Subject dead.  
  
Sirius Black can survive naturally without our aid. I suggest we find and pursuade him. Use any means nessicary, including tourture. He will help us. The Crest is more valuable than that fool Minister Reiton thinks.  
  
-Xa"  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: 11:03 at night. Got to sleep. Been sick. Otherwise I wouldn't have left it at a cliffie. Sorry. 


	8. Part VIII: Approach to the Innmost Cave

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
Harry and his world belong to J K Rowling. I am making ten billion pounds of thin air, okay?  
  
Thank you, very, very much for being nice!  
  
no feel good. 'tis short today. Appologies.  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter VIII (continued):  
  
Desperate Attempt at Mind Games  
  
  
  
The ultimate in lazyness. No, quiet! Sirius forced the thoughts from his mind. He had been sitting with his legs foulded in a crossed position, his hands on his knees, staring blankly ahead into the darkness for a long while now. A day? A minute? Impossible to tell. Time streached infinatly out on end here.  
  
Thinking of absolutly nothing was comparable to holding your breath under water, but it was nesscissary if he planed to survive. Dementors fed on emotions. If he had none, if he kept his mind blank . . .  
  
"CHEESE!"  
  
If he managed to, by miracle, ignore the prisoners. His thoughts kept wandering. Sirius glanced down at the floor of the cell, studying the make of it. Rock. Granite? Keep your mind focused.  
  
He was physically shaking. Cold. Azkaban; Dementors. For a moment he had forgotton. Oh, yes- Azkaban. A country? Pakastan, Afganastan, Azkaban? No, it's a jail . . . this isn't a country. Island. Azkaban is an island.  
  
With a start Sirius realized that he had been slipping. Why? He had survived for twelve years . . . this would make thirteen.  
  
No, wait. How long have I been in here this time? Harry was here! Harry was at Azkaban. Why? What did he do? Sirius couldn't remember.  
  
Harry was here to help him get out! Sirius swore mentaly, pinching himself hard. Focus.  
  
He could hear the Dementors passing outside of his cell more than usual. They were getting excited. A death was comming on. Focus.  
  
"One. Two. Three. Four. Five . . . er, six. Seven. Eight. N . . . nine. Ten." Now French: "Un. Deux. Trois. Quatre. Cinq. Six. Sept. Huit. Neuf. Dix. Frere Jaques, frere Jaques, dormez-vous? Dormez-vous? Somma- lemon-tina, somm . . ."  
  
That crack looked like a canyon, if he tilted his head . . . neat. A canyon. Maybe he could escape through the canyon.  
  
He moved closer to it, feeling a rush of exhilleration. He was getting out.  
  
CRACK! Did he fall off the edge?  
  
Bloody Hell! Sirius rubbed his forehead, cursing. I ran into the bloody wall!  
  
He scooted backwards across the hard floor of the cell, worried. I'm losing it. I'm really losing it. Maybe there was a limit to how long a person could survive in Azkaban, innocent or not. Keep focused.  
  
"Once upon a time there was a man named . . . er . . . Brandon. Brandon decided he wanted to visit the North Pole. Brandon got on his broom and flew to the North Pole. On his way he found an island called Pakast- AZKABAN. Brandon landed. Brandon saw some odd-looking things wearing black cloaks. Brandon called them tick-a-bines. Brandon saw a little boy with black hair and a scar. The little boy was cleaning the island because it was dirty.  
  
" 'Hello' said Brandon.  
  
" 'Hello' said the little boy.  
  
" 'Hello' said the tick-a-bines. 'Are you hungrey? I am.'  
  
"So they ate some food.  
  
"My God, this is a pathetic story." Sirius grinned slightly to himself.  
  
"Once upon a time, and then, the end." I'm gone, Sirius thought. After all these years, this is the end. It was me that the Dementors were sencing. Strangely, he didn't feel upset. Only somewhat giddy.  
  
  
  
"You've got to be bloody KIDDING me!" The Minister of Defence glared daggers at Wesson.  
  
"I wish I were, Sir! Believe me," the man replied unhappily, "if there was anyway to mend the situation . . ."  
  
"Great! Just bloody great. Now what?"  
  
"Well, his son is still there. We could use the boy."  
  
"Fine." The minister sat down heavilly on his coushined chair, rubbing his temples. He flicked a hand at Wesson, shooing him away.  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
Azkaban was deffinatly not Nathanial Wesson's favourite place. It wasn't his least favourite, though; that honour belonged to the area immidiatly sourrounding his ex-wife. He had been married only a short time before their devorce, afterwards he had continued on his work at the Ministry, and Catherine had packed up and taken the two kids to Germany to get away from him. He didn't miss them. Not really.  
  
"What are you planning on telling the boy?" Doctor Maelani's voice murmured in his ear.  
  
"Donno. Does it matter?" He rubbed her bare back distractedly, staring out the window at the wide ocean. "Can't imagine Sirius Black having been too good of a father."  
  
"Still . . . he might take the loss kind of hard. Kids." She smiled intently, the same look she had whilst questioning Black. The look of eager anticipation. "What do you think kept him sane for so long, though?"  
  
"Who knows?"  
  
"Sir, with your permission, could I preform an autopsy on Black, pick the answers out of his brain myself?"  
  
"He isn't dead," Wesson stared at her. She stared right back. "Well . . . I suppose . . . since he's as good as dead anyway . . . oh, all right."  
  
Maelani looked delighted. "Thank you, Sir. We'll finally put an end to this mystery plaguing the psycological department for years!"  
  
He grinned, both horrified and facinated by her eagerness. One thing, though, was clear; he may have been pond scum, but Maelani made Wesson look like purified bottled watter.  
  
Sonna Ibse was disgusted with the both of them.  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
"Mr, eh, Deneb," the man said, figeting with the end of his royal blue dress robes.  
  
"Yes?" The boy blink curiously up at them with wide, green eyes.  
  
"Do you remember the plan we gave to you?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Well-"  
  
"There's been a change." Maelani interupted, much to Wesson's releif. "We think it would be much simpler if you just retrieved the . . . object . . . yourself, rather than worry about the Dementors and such."  
  
"Er- okay."  
  
"Excellent!" Wesson handed him a clear, glass orb the size of a Remembrall, and explained, "This will light your way. Be carefull. You activate it by shaking it."  
  
Next, Deneb was given a tiny, jewl-sized, ruby-coloured bead, closely resembling a single drop of blood.  
  
"This," said Wesson, "will tell us when you have found the object and brought it back to Azkaban's lower level. The password to activate it is 'Severus Snape, Nathanial Wesson, and Wormtail are ugly warty Death Eaters, and smell like the entire London Zoo'."  
  
All occupants of the room turned to stare at him.  
  
"Black made it up," Wesson mumbled.  
  
  
  
Sirius Black had his knees tucked into his chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. He made no move to notice when three guards grabbed him roughly under the arms and hauled him from the cell; his eyes were slits dispite the dim illumination.  
  
They dropped the man carelessly onto the hard floor in the interrogation room, where he slumped forward listlissly.  
  
Wesson wrinkled his nose from the metaphoracle stench of filth. Of Azkaban; of this once-man.  
  
Maelani grabbed Black by his hair, tilting his face twoards her. With her perfectly manicured thumb and second finger, she pried open one of his half-colsed eyes. The pupil dialated automatically in the sudden light; but he didn't seem to see anything.  
  
"He's gone," she stated, dropping him.  
  
"Great." Wesson looked disgustedly at him. "Let's just hope the boy . . ." He warped his sentence into a cough on rememberance of the three guards.  
  
  
  
Chapter IX:  
  
Decent, and Fractured Plans  
  
Harry raised the sphere of light, casting the glow against the rock guarding the entrance to the catacombs.  
  
" 'Let this be a warning to the unwary'," he mumbled, reading the inscription carved into the arch of the heavy door. " 'In certainty, you will find naught but death seeking to dishonour the underworld. For here rests the dead of the past, and the shape of the future. Ever wise be he who treads lightly on stolen ground'.  
  
"Meaning this place has traps. Wonderful." Harry placed the light at his feet, then pushed at the door with both hands. Nothing. He threw his meager weight into it, and got no further than a bruised shoulder.  
  
"Okay. So there's some sort of trick to it . . ." The problem was, what? As far as he cold tell, there was absolutly no distinguishing marks of any sort about the entrance. Just the heavy block of stone, and the writing.  
  
He ran his hands over the rock, searching for a seam. Again, nothing.  
  
"Oh, come on, open up, will you?"  
  
Maybe there was some sort of password. "Open Seseme. 'Open,' says me. Isis. The Crest of Isis. Golden Ankh Thingy. Let me in. . . .Please?"  
  
He read the inscription again, and again.  
  
"Oh, wait, I didn't see this part." Carved at the foot of the block was a second, smaller carving: De h onicle u isbtarfeto fteda  
  
" 'Dee h onicle you is-but-are-feet-oh ft-ee-da'?" Another language? Ancient Egyption, maybe?  
  
Benieth that was a set of odd marks Harry had origionally mistook for scratches: /~ ////// of ///~ /  
  
"One to six of three to one?" He scratched his head, and decided to work on the second inscription instead.  
  
"Dee h oni- wait a minute. This is suppose to be simple, if you have the key, and requires no special knowlage." All riddles worked around the facts of common knowlage. So if the first inscription was English, the second should be too, right?  
  
Harry tried reading it backwards, struggling again with the unframiliar group of sylables, "Adeetf oteff-rat-bsee you el-see-no. Well that doesn't make any sense."  
  
He glanced again down at the numbers- well, presumed numbers. From his standing position, the little wiggly symble could be made to replace a zero, making '/~' instead '/0'.  
  
"Ten? Ten-six- er, sixteen, of thr- thirty one? Sixteen of thirty- one? Thirty-one what?"  
  
He made a rough estimate on the dementions of the stone block in metres, then in feet, just in case. Nothing came close to fourteen, let alone thirty-one.  
  
Harry counted the letters of the second inscription. Twenty-five. He did it again, this time adding in the spaces. Thirty.  
  
He recounted. Thirty. One short. 'De h onicle u isbtarfeto fteda' had thirty positions in it.  
  
"Wait-" there seemed to be a bit more distance than normal between 'onicle' and 'u'. Two spaces? If he looked at it that way, sixteen spaces from the beginning put him on the 'i' of isbtarfeto.  
  
"I." Nothing happened. Feeling betrayed, Harry recounted spaces and letters. Same thing. I.  
  
"I." he insisted. He scanned the nonsence setense, using i as his reference point. Isb- wait. Isb, then over to the 'u', then back over to isbtarfeto's 't'. Isbut. Is but.  
  
Harry continued that way, deciphering the sentense by skipping back and fourth from letters on alternating sides of the 'i'.  
  
When he finished, the inscription read: isbutareflectionofthedead. Is but a reflection of the dead. What was, though?  
  
He looked back up at the first inscription, and saw it almost at once. Each of the capitalized letters, when read out, spelled the answer.  
  
Sure of himself, Harry took a deep breath, then said clearly, " 'Life is but a reflection of the dead'."  
  
The block of stone dematerialized before him, revealing an open mouth of darkness.  
  
  
  
A/N: !!!!!!!Sirius has a plan, it is going to work, so DO NOT FLAME ME! I AM NOT ABOUT TO KILL OFF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER!!! If you do not listen to me on this, and yell at me, you won't get to see what Sirius' plan is (yes, he wasn't just saying that to make Harry feel better), Pettigrew getting his butt kicked, or what happens with the Crest! Get it?! Good!  
  
I'd tell you more to reassure you further, but then you'd flame me for giving his plan away. I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. I'll tell you this much, though: Sirius is going to call Fudge "Fat Head".  
  
P.S: Yes, Wesson is going to get his comuppance.  
  
P.P.S: And, yes, I know that 'somma-lemon-tina' is not how the song goes. Give Siri a break.  
  
P.P.P.S: No insane guys screeming 'Cheese!' every five seconds were harmed during the production of this chapter. 


	9. Part IX: some more

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
Sorry I got you guys confused, you've been great to me! Well, I've learned my lessons: Never try to write something whist battling a fever. It's okay now, though- I'm well again. Basically what happened was that Sirius seems to have lost his mind, so the Minister of Defence decides to make Harry be the one to go fetch the Crest of Isis from the catacombs beneith Azkaban. The entrance to it was blocked by a riddle, which Harry managed to solve.  
  
None of this is mine save the stupid summerys. Harry and his magical world belong to J K Rowling.  
  
  
  
  
  
IX:  
  
Decent, and Fractured Plans (con't)  
  
  
  
If one understood Dementors, one could find ways to work around them. Dementors were like Muggle computer programs; they were quite predictable in their actions. The 'black ghouls' fed off emotions, and they devoured souls. They did not plot, nor cheat, nor- as far as he knew- do anything else. It was their so called 'handlers' what were the ones to worry about.  
  
Humans were the most dangerous preditors ever to walk the Earth; mostly because their brains COULD comprehend the meaning of such things as betrayal, war, and deceit. They also carried an almost unbreakable set of prejudices, such as that if you went to Azkaban, then you went insane.  
  
Sirius Black, thirty-four year-old wizard from Edtinburough, Scotland, had been the sole exception from that rule for twelve years. But in the end, the Azkaban prejudice had proved true once again.  
  
Caught in a no-win sitiuation, he had worked into what action he could; found the so-called 'alternative path'. He was of no use to anybody as a psycotic, and thus freed from an untimely end. Plus, his godson would now have a chance at a real family, something he had lacked for many, many years.  
  
His second escape from Azkaban would have been easy at that point; no security, no suspicious creeps like Wesson poking their noses into his buisness.  
  
What he didn't count on was the possiblility of intrest in the phenomanon of his extended sanity.  
  
If keeping his mind still had been hard, doing so physically was excruciating tourture. Sirius tried to concentrate on what the hell he was going to do now that he was stuck at the bloody Ministry of Magic, rather than his itching muscles, but found the task nearly impossible.  
  
Through slitted eyes, he could dimly make out the painfully bright lights bobbing at regular intervals overhead, and a guard walking just before his streacher. If only he knew where they were taking him. . . .  
  
And then they stopped. Sirius let his head flop limply to one side, giving himself a slight view of the surrounding area.  
  
Directly in front of his face was a metal washbin, behind him was a wooden door. Someone grasped him by the chin and tilted his face back upward, ending his observations.  
  
"Now?" a man's voice asked somewhere above Sirius' head.  
  
"No- I don't quite fancy cleaning up a corpse," a female voice replied. Corpse?  
  
"Aye," the man chuckled. "God, he is a mess, though."  
  
The woman giggled, and Sirius felt a cold washcloth travel across the side of his face, over his forehead, and across the bridge of his nose. He struggled not to sneeze.  
  
"How old do you think he was?"  
  
"Dunno . . . fourty, I'd guess."  
  
'Fourty'? Sirius fought off the urge to glare at the unseen speaker.  
  
"No, look at his eyes. The lack of wrinkles. I'd put him in his mid- thirties." Her statement was punctuated by a shap, firey prick to the inside of his elbow.  
  
By reflex, Sirius jerked awake, making both the guard and a female doctor jump back.  
  
"He's awake!" she yelped.  
  
Sirius glanced down at the long hypedermic needle embedded in the inside of his arm, slowly releasing a dark, gray-green liquid into his system. After Azkaban, he really, really hated shots. With a single deft motion he pried the needle out, trying to keep from winceing.  
  
The guard went for his wand; Sirius jumped dizzily to his feet and jabbed the shot underneith the man's jaw.  
  
"Put it down," he commanded, then added to the doctor, "and you. Both of you give me your wands." They complied, and Sirius quickley replaced needle with wand, glaring darkly in what he hoped was an excaped-murderish style.  
  
He shook his head to clear away the fog threatening behind his eyes, apparently the effects of keeping still for so long. "Where are we?"  
  
"Ministry of Magic, pre-op ward," the doctor replied in a crisp, strangely calm voice.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Brainsurgery."  
  
"WHAT?"  
  
"To find out why you aren't insane," the guard put in.  
  
"I'll tell you that right now!" Sirius stumbled slightly as the world tilted beneith his feet, and managed to regain his balance. "I didn't lose my mind in Azkaban because I knew I was innocent, and that's not a happy thought so the Dementors can't take it away from me!"  
  
"Innocent?" the doctor's eyebrows shot up.  
  
"YES! YES! INNOCENT!" His words were comming out in a rush, and sounding very distant. Numbly, Sirius placed a hand on the streacher to steady himself.  
  
"You didn't blow up that street?" the guard looked almost stricken.  
  
"NO!! PETER Pettigreww dith. . ." He stumbled forward into the guard, unable to feel his legs. His left arm was throbbing almost painfully. The guard caught him around the waist, struggling against the unexpected weight.  
  
He shifted so the unconscious convict was supported across his knees, then demanded, "Are you sure forced honesty is one of the effects of the drug you gave him?"  
  
"Yes," the doctor answered, face white. Night's leaf was a powerful toxin, capable of only two effects: truth serum, and then a quick, painless death. Black had no choice but to tell the truth.  
  
The guard stared down at the man's almost colourless face, slowly relaxing as life drained from his body. It was like watching the speeded-up recording of a flower closeing up for the night; the onset of death at an unnatural rate.  
  
"Then get him an antidote. But don't tell anyone why you need it."  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
"AAARGHH!"  
  
"Ron!" Mrs Weasley snaped at her youngest son.  
  
"What, the Cannons lose again?" Fred joked, and tried to snatch the paper away from his brother.  
  
"Nah, probably he just found out that they've been cut from the World Quidditch League 'cause they stink worse than he does." George reached across the table for a stack of buttered scones, and got an angry glare from his mother.  
  
"Cannons don't stink!" Ron retorted, moveing the scones out of George's reach. Fred snatched a few up and tossed them to his twin.  
  
"Boys! Behave yourselves!" Mrs Weasley scolded.  
  
"I gotta owl Harry!" Ron yelped, and attempted to launch himself from the breakfast table.  
  
"RON! Sit down!"  
  
"Yeah," Fred added, "don't use Pig when there's food around; he'll land in it."  
  
"He only did that once, stupid," Ron grumped.  
  
"No name calling," his mother scolded.  
  
"Yeah," George added, "it's not our fault you got a retarded owl what doesn't know his arse from his elbow."  
  
"George!"  
  
"Yeah, well Sirius didn't know he was retarded." Ron muttered, offended.  
  
" 'Sirius'?" Fred and George chorused. "As in 'Sirius Bloody Black?"  
  
"Boys!"  
  
"Off course not!" Ron scoffed. "Why would he get me an owl?"  
  
"I don't know." Fred and George exchanged identical glances. "But you DID come home with Pig after you ran into that maniac."  
  
Now even Mrs Weasley was looking at him oddly. "Ron?"  
  
"Erm . . . yes, Mum?"  
  
"Where did Pig come from?"  
  
"Well . . . when a guy owl really loves a girl owl-"  
  
"MUM!" Fred interrupted, snatching up the paper his younger brother had discarded, "Look a' this!"  
  
HARRY POTTER KIDNAPPED BY SIRIUS BLACK!  
  
writes Natalie Newlingala, special correspondant.  
  
Yesterday, Hogwarts' game keeper, the half-giant Rubeus Hagrid,  
  
visited Mr Potter's home, apparently to check up on the boy's  
  
well-being. He found Potter missing.  
  
"I asked the Muggles (that he lives with) where (Harry) was, and  
  
they told me his murdering godfather took him," says Hagrid.  
  
"(Black) forced his way into my home five nights ago," explains Mr  
  
Vernon Dursley, Harry's Muggle uncle. "He threatened to kill myself,  
  
Petunia, and our son, Dudley, and told us he was taking (my nephew)."  
  
"Filthy wretch he was, too," says Mrs Petunia Dursley. "Tall man, filthy  
  
black hair, wearing some kind of a shabby grey (robe)."  
  
"I wet my trowsers," complains Dudley, Harry's cousin. "I thought he was going to kill me."  
  
The Ministry has been notified, and searches are in progress to recouver  
  
the Boy Who Lived, and put Sirius Black to justice. Any information about  
  
the whereabouts of either is greatly appriciated, and tips leading to the capture  
  
of Black and/ or the rescue of Potter will be rewarded with as much as 10.000  
  
galleons.  
  
"Oh no!" Mrs Weasley gasped. She rushed to the fireplace, the boys right behind her.  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter X:  
  
Of Retards and Renegades  
  
  
  
  
  
" Od . . . e . . . ay?"  
  
"I . . . ow . . . o. Do you kn . . . w . . . eans?"  
  
"If . . . ives or . . . ies?"  
  
"Either way."  
  
"No."  
  
"Shut . . . it. Please." Sirius grumbled, squeezing his eyes shut against the worst headache he'd had since the morning after James' last birthday.  
  
"Herr Black?" a male voice inquired.  
  
Sirius growled a reply, afraid he'd be sick.  
  
"I think he will live." the same heavily German voice stated.  
  
"Good." The guard let out a sigh of relief. "Good. If he'd died it'd really have hit the fan."  
  
Sirius forced an eye open, taking in the two men over him, and a white-washed room he wasn't framiliar with. "What happened?" he croaked.  
  
"That's what I'd like to know!" A man in red, green, and black robes stormed over, banging the door shut behind him. "What's so important that it can't wait for a conferance with- SIRIUS BLACK!"  
  
"Precisely." the guard said. "Sir, I'd like to show you something . . ." He ripped Sirius' left sleeve off at the shoulder, making him protest loudly and discriptivly.  
  
In a fluid motion, the guard tapped his wand against Sirius' forearm. Nothing happened.  
  
"What . . ?" The newcommer knelt down beside them, staring from the guard to Sirius and back.  
  
"Sirius Black," the guard stated, "is not a Death Eater. He has no Dark Mark, and thus is not part of the Dark Lord's alligiance."  
  
The other stared wordlessly at the blank spot on Sirius' arm, then slowly met his gaze. "How?"  
  
"I was framed," he said, slightly tired of telling the story, "by Pettigrew. I stayed sane in Azkaban because I knew I was innocent."  
  
"Give him a trial," the man ordered. Startled, Sirius gaped at him, and slowly felt the ice in his spine melt, erodeing away the years of touture from the halls of Azkaban that left him hard-spirited and empty.  
  
"Yes, Minister Reiton," the guard saluted.  
  
"'Reiton'?" Sirius snaped, glancing at the man who was, most deffinatly, not the Minister of Deffence.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"You- you're not Minister Reiton," he accused. "Or did you take Polyjuice Potion? Where's that NeruoTech ice witch, anyway?"  
  
The man looked confused, and slightly irritated. "I can assure you that I am who I say I am, and that I would never stoop to aiding those NeruoTech feinds."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"NeruoTech," the man continued darkly, "is responsible for more wizard and Muggle deaths than the bloody Dark Lord. They tamper with the human mind, making people into nothing more than lab experiments. We cut off funding for them last year."  
  
"I- I don't . . ." If this was the real Minister of Defence, and the other was a fake, maybe working for NeuroTech . . . if they needed some way to fund their work . . .  
  
And then it clicked. They were going to use him to retrieve a 'valuable Egyptian artifact' because he could survive Azkaban. They couldn't use anyone else, especially and Auror, because what they were doing was illigal.  
  
"Something wrong?" Minister Reiton asked.  
  
Sirius ignored him. Why pretend to be the Minister of Defence, though? Power? Power to be in charge of prisoners . . . like him. No one would question if the Minister of Defence took Sirius Black from the Ministery to Azkaban.  
  
But their plan failed. He was, as far as they knew, insane. So they had no one to get their stupi- HARRY!  
  
"Herr Black?" the German officer snapped his fingers before Sirius' face.  
  
"Take me to Azkaban," he snapped at Reiton, scarecly believing what he had said. "I think Harry's in trouble."  
  
* * *  
  
The tunnel curved steadily downward, deeper into the heart of the Island Fortress. Harry held his light high over his head, attempting to illuminate as much of his surroundings as he could.  
  
Great pillars of rock bit through both floor and ceiling of the passage, forming natural teeth on either side of him; Harry felt like he were decending into the jaws of some primordial beast. Crystals hued in glassy green, yellow, and pink decourated the mineral pools between the stalagmites, glittering like gems under the light.  
  
He shivered, eyes combing the rocky walls for any signs of traps. If the Ministry people didn't want to use Sirius because of the threat of Dementors sencing him, why not just tell those monsters that he was being released? So many things didn't make sence to him.  
  
Harry shook his head, deciding to focus on the task at hand. The tunnel appared to have no dangers, and no subpassages- easy enough, for now. When he got back to the dungeon, though, what then? Maybe he could offer the Crest in return of them letting his godfather go; threaten to distroy it if they didn't. Yes. That was it.  
  
Plan fully settled, Harry picked up his feet to avoid making that irritating scratching sound that'd been unconsiously bothering him for the past few minutes.  
  
The scratching continued.  
  
Harry froze, listening as the bass rumble slowly increased in volume. Apprehensively, he turned around, casting the light into the shadows behind him.  
  
At first he didn't see it, but then a massive block of stone as wide and high as the tunnel crawled into the light, inching its way along the floor towards him. Harry stumbled back, then broke into a run.  
  
The passageway ended just up ahead, the far wall scared with the blacked residue of ineffective spell blasts, and deep scratches carved into the rock by fingernails. The skeletal remains of human beings, crushed into a white powder, lay scattered across the wall and floor like ash.  
  
Harry turned and darted back the other way, running his hands over the walls in hopes of finding a trick lever, or more writing, anything. He pushed up against the deadly block, wondering where he could find the answer. Why couldn't the ancients ever make it easy for grave robbers?  
  
The wall at the end was most likely of no help; the white dust pushed into cracks within it was proof enough of the futility of trying there.  
  
Ten metres away.  
  
THINK! Harry smacked himself on the head, trying to ignore the fact that he was close to becoming very thin. There had to be a way out.  
  
Or did there? Why hide a priceless treasure someplace where it could be taken?  
  
Nine metres.  
  
Harry sprinted back to the wall, then dropped to his hands and knees, scrabbling at the floor in desperation.  
  
A notch!  
  
Shaking, he clawed at the tiny crack with his nails, watching as the rock broke away with agonizing slowness. A seam.  
  
Eight.  
  
"Ouch!" he shoved the finger into his mouth, and continued working with his other hand.  
  
Six.  
  
Six? Harry glanced back over his shoulder. Six? What happend to seven?  
  
Five.  
  
Nevermind seven! He turned quickly back to what was now becoming the outling of a trap door.  
  
Four.  
  
Harry seized the edges of it, pulling upwards with all his might.  
  
Three.  
  
Dust and flakes of rock broke off from the sides as the slab slowly rose to the surface.  
  
Two.  
  
Harry shoved the tablet back, then cried out as it struck the front of the crushing block, rebounded, and caught him in the stomach. Furiously, he tossed it aside and sliped into the narrow opening.  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: We lost the internet connection for a while there, so that's why this was so late. Hopefully the next part will be up tomarrow. 


	10. Part X: the one I did whist sick

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
None of the Harry Potter characters, places, or events belong to me. You could sue me, but the most you'd get would be a chocolate made to look like money that's been in my pocket for two years.  
  
  
  
Sorry it's so short- got the flu. I'll try to get more up soon.  
  
  
  
Chapter X:  
  
Of Retards and Renegades (con't)  
  
  
  
  
  
The journey to Azkaban this time around wasn't nearly as bad as the first. Sirius had been supplied with a room and a change of cloathes, something he had sorely lacked over the years. He had been surprised at how long it took him to get clean; he'd had to drain the filthy water of his tub several times and fill it with fresh before he'd been satisfied with himself.  
  
His hair was a different matter all together, as evidenced by the broken remains of the complemental hair brush now occupying a far corner of his room. Trying to brush the tangled mess hanging down to his shoulders had proved to be painfully impossible.  
  
He had, though, managed to avoid looking into the mirrior; the picture on his Wanted poster had scared him half to death when he'd first seen it. He had no intentions of glimpsing himself until he looked at least as good as someone not already dead and buried.  
  
"What the . . !"  
  
Sirius glanced up from the latest edition of 'the Witch's World: magical magazine for you'- not exactly his favourite choice, but the only reading material avalable in his cabin aboard the large ship.  
  
A man stood in the doorway, staring in mingled disbelief and horror, grey eyes widened. "S-Sirius? What are you DOING?" He glanced around, finally laying eyes on the magazing Sirius Black still had propped up in his lap.  
  
"I could ask you the same thing," he replied, and shoved 'Witch's World' underneith a pillow on the plain, standard-issue bed. "Don't bother comming in; in fact, close the door and leave."  
  
Still staring at him, Nathanial Wesson obeyed neither request, but made his way over to where Sirius lay streached out undernieth the covers.  
  
"You're supposed to be insane! You're supposed to be dead . . !"  
  
"You're not really and Auror, are you?" Sirius countered coldly. "I know all about NeuroTech, Wesson. I know the man claiming to be Minister Reiton isn't him. I know you're after the Crest to fund your Frankensteinian work."  
  
Surprisingly, Wesson started to laugh. "Got it all figured out, have you, Black?" He reached over and patted Sirius on the arm; the other jerked away from him. "But to answer your first question, when you didn't show up in the surgical ward, I figured you'd returned to Azkaban to get your son. I supposed you had escaped somehow, though I didn't realize that one could recouver from insanity that quickly, if at all."  
  
"Hah." Sirius gave him a dirty look. "You know, for all your talk about neurology, there is something you keep missing time and again."  
  
"Oh? And what's that."  
  
"Your assumption that everyone's as stupid as you are."  
  
"Hm." Wesson's face relaxed into a smile that reminded Sirius strongly of Snape. "Well, Black, you 'ave got one thing right. I do work for NeuroTech."  
  
"Uh-huh." Sirius glared at him. "You know, the real Minister of Defence and an Auror are staying in the rooms imidiatly next to mine."  
  
Wesson paled noticeably, then said- much quieter, "But how are they going to know I'm here if you won't tell them?"  
  
"Oh, I'll tell them. Maybe then you can go to Azkaban yourself and not attract any attention."  
  
Still smiling, Wesson raised his wand. Sirius sat up quickly, reaching for the man-  
  
"Cerebrilimperio- AHH!" Wesson dropped the wand, clutching at his broken hand. "Damn you, Black!"  
  
Sirius let go of the other's wrist, and retrieved the wand. Wesson stopped simpering and looked slowly up at him. "Give me that."  
  
Sirius handed it over; it was just a stick, after all. He didn't need it.  
  
Grinning, Wesson said, "Cerebrilimperio- a nice little curse. The 'Frankensteinian workers' came up with it. Unlike the Imperio curse, however, this one doesn't wipe your mind, just changes it. I told you, you're not going to tell anyone about me."  
  
"No." Why would he?  
  
"Good. Black, listen closely. You're a Death Eater, but you're not going to hurt me or anyone from the Ministry. Understood? You're going to Azkaban to get your kid, and you're also going to get the Crest of Isis and give it to me. Got it?"  
  
"Yes. I'm a Death Eater. I won't hurt you or anyone from the Ministry. I'm going to get a kid and the Crest, then give it to you." Easy enough. He wouldn't hurt them . . . for now. But if Voldemort ordered him to, Sirius would only be too happy to kill Nathanial Wesson.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: sorry, too short, I know. Next chapter: Death Eaters, Azkaban, and more of Harry. 


	11. Part XI: Where it gets a little crazy

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
Harry and his world belong to J K Rowling.  
  
  
  
Chapter XI: Yzix  
  
  
  
  
  
"Ouch!" Harry hadn't thought about what the landing would be like when he'd slipped into the trap door; his mind had been preoccupied with getting out of the path of the crushing block. The floor was only about two metres below the higher level, but it wasn't exactly soft.  
  
Groaning, Harry stood, and fumbled in one of the pockets of his robe for the light. In moments the darkness was replaced by a dim, yellowish glow, and Harry felt the icy hand of fear return.  
  
Skulls. The room was littered with skulls, and the skeletal remains of victims past. Carved into the rocky wall on all sides were a honeycomb of niches, each possessing the mumified wrapings of some long dead corpse. He had found the catacombs.  
  
Mustering his courage, the boy started forward again, being careful to avoid stepping on any of the time-bleached bones. What had killed them?  
  
Harry examined a few of the skulls, and found them perfectly intact- the same with the other bones. No wounds, no unusual breaks, no teeth marks. As far as he could tell, the owners of the skeletons had simply decided to drop dead.  
  
Avada Kedavera? The killing curse left no trace of a reason for death. Harry shivered, and not only because of the distinctly chilly air.  
  
He raised the light higher, trying to see as much of his surroundings as possible- FLASH! A brilliantly coloured spectrem of light illuminated the catacombs for a single fraction of a second, making Harry double up, shielding his eyes from the insinsity.  
  
Blinking away large purplish splotches floating before his vision, Harry tenitively raised the light again, looking for the source of the flash.  
  
This time he saw it- the Ankh. The Crest of Isis, a beautifully carved artifact from a long gone age, inlaid with diamonds, and set into a pedistal of blue fire.  
  
As soon as the light toutched it, the dim flame intinsified, rising into a pillar nearly twenty metres tall, and filling the chambre with an eerie blue light. Harry put away his glowsphere, and started towards his prize, heart beating very fast.  
  
But how to get to it?  
  
Skeeeesssst.  
  
Harry froze, watching as the flames directly before him seemed to mould into the shape of a woman's face.  
  
WHAT WILL YOU GIVE? The voice seemed to bubble up within his consiousness. Harry's eyes widened, staring at the face with mingled curiosity and fear. WHY DO YOU SEEK TO HARNESS THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD?  
  
"I- I . . ." he stumbled for words, and finally managed, "I th- thought Isis was the goddess of- "  
  
ISIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. DID YOU MISTAKE ISIS FOR YZIX? BOTH ARE PRONOUNCED THE SAME.  
  
"Er . . ." Harry didn't know what to say. He had been told that this was the crest of Isis; he hadn't the faintest who Yzix was.  
  
STUPID MORTAL.  
  
"Hey!" Harry snapped, "It's not my fault! The Minister of Defence and that Wesson guy told me to get 'the Crest of Isis' from here or they'd kill my godfather." He felt a cold pass through his heart at the ideas of what they'd do to Sirius if he didn't return with what he was sent for.  
  
The face seemed to pause for a moment, then, I, TOO WAS A GODDESS IN THE LAND THAT WOULD ONE DAY BE KNOWN AS EGYPT. FEW KNOW ME, I WAS OLDER, EVEN, THAN THE GREAT NILE. WHEN THE MORTALS TURNED TO THEIR GODS, I WAS FORGOTTEN.  
  
"I'm sorry," Harry said. Maybe if he brought back the crest of Yzix, the Ministry guys wouldn't know the difference . . .  
  
BUT ARE YOU WORTHY?  
  
"Huh?" He stared, wondering if she could read minds.  
  
I CAN.  
  
"Oh." Harry gulped, not sure what to do now. "What do you mean, 'am I worthy'?"  
  
ARE YOU WORTHY TO OWN THE CREST?  
  
"I don't want to own it, I just want it to free my godfather."  
  
I SEE. BUT TO TAKE IT FROM ITS RESTING PLACE, YOU MUST PROVE YOURSELF.  
  
"How?"  
  
The face's firey lips curled upwards in a chilling smile.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
"What's going on?" Sirius strode quickly towards Minister Reiton. The younger man guestured towards Azkaban, where a faint trickle of dark blue smoke was drifting lazily upwards into the afternoon sky.  
  
"They've done it." Reiton explained, looking flushed of colour. "My God, I've warned Fudge, but he didn't listen . . . they've finally done it."  
  
"What?" Sirius was getting annoyed with this pathetic minister. Couldn't he just get to the point? His master was never so indirect.  
  
"The Death Eaters . . . have broken into Azkaban."  
  
"Really?" Good. Sirius' hard eyes swept over the quickly approaching island. He fought off the urge to smile; Reiton might get suspicious of his true motives. Harry Potter was on that island. Sirius didn't give a damn about any Crest- it was Potter he wanted. The master would be pleased when he brought the boy's lifeless body to him.  
  
Wesson watched, hiding behind a mast of the angular ship, having no idea what he'd done by casually remarking that Sirius was a Death Eater. He just needed to get that Crest, and sell it- then NeuroTech would be on its feet again.  
  
He hoped.  
  
  
  
The island was as uninvating as ever, but this time Sirius stepped onto its rocky shore with his head high. Maybe dear old Peter was even amoung them, little cowardly Peter who deserved to die his due thousand times. But then again, Sirius supposed, he owed Peter for giving his tattered life a new purpose. Death. The Ministry had destroyed him; perhaps now he could build his life anew in the service of the Dark Lord. His face twisted into a smile at the irony of it all.  
  
Just inside the hard doors of the fortress, a battle raged. The guards were outnumbered, but if one of them managed to get a call off to the Ministry . . .  
  
Sirius sprinted down the cracked steps and grabbed the nearest guard's wrist, flipping him over his own shoulder and onto the hard floor with a sickening crack. He snapped his fist into the man's face, then yanked the wand out of his hand.  
  
"Stupify!" One guard down. Sirius turned back to the row- and spotted another guard using the edge of his baton to choke the life out of some Death Eater. Both men were without wands; Sirius supposed they had gotten lost in the confusion.  
  
He darted over, avoiding the crossfire of hexes, and pointed his wand at the startled guard. "Stupify!"  
  
The Death Eater struggled to his feet, pulling his mask off for a better look at his rescuer. "S-Sirius Black?"  
  
Sirius favoured the man with a cold smile, then Stupified another guard.  
  
"What the hell are you doing?" the Death Eater was staring at him in shock.  
  
"Trying to save your pathetic hide." He blocked a hex thrown at him, and countered with "Obliviate!" sending chunks of rock and shrapnal falling into the path of the man.  
  
The Auror to, had launched into the frey; Sirius took advantage of the man turning his back on him- "Stupify!" Then he turned back to the Death Eater. "Don't kill any of these men- just tie them up, or the like- I want to have a nice little chat with them about the many uses of trying people for their crimes."  
  
"Yes, sir!" The man ran off, presumably to pass the word. Sirius turned from the battle, sprinting off down the darkened halls of Azkaban. He would make the guards pay. But now, he would find Harry Potter.  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT. Harry froze, thinking. What he wanted? He wanted to get the Crest. He wanted Sirius to be free. He wanted Pettigrew to get caught in a mousetrap. He wanted a jumper.  
  
TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT FROM THE CREST, the face clarified.  
  
"Erm . . . I want to use it to trade for my godfather's life." Easy enough.  
  
YOU DON'T WANT TO BRING YOUR PARENTS BACK TO LIFE?  
  
"What?!" Harry stared at the face, not sure what the feeling that welled up inside his heart was.  
  
WITH THE CREST, YOU CAN HARNESS THE POWERS OF THE SPIRIT WORLD. I TOLD YOU THAT.  
  
Harry felt numb all over. He sat down, looking up at the pillar of cold flame. His parents. "You mean I- I could bring them back to life? And they'd be okay?" He was trembling, but didn't really care.  
  
THEY WOULD BE AS THEY WERE THE MOMENT BEFORE THEY DIED- PERFECTLY FINE. THEY WOULD BE AS THOUGH THEY HAD JUMPED FOURTEEN YEARS INTO THE FUTURE.  
  
"What's the catch?" There had to be a catch- it seemed too good to be true.  
  
THAT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU'RE WILLING TO GIVE. The face's smile deepened.  
  
"L-like what?" He'd give anything- well, almost anything. If he gave his life, having his parents back would be useless to him.  
  
AN ARM? A FINGER? A FRIEND?  
  
"Not a friend. I won't let someone die just because of me." Harry fixed his face into a stubborn look, glaring at the fire. "I'll give my . . . my fourtune. All my money in Gringotts. And my- "  
  
WHAT USE HAVE I FOR GOLD? YOU'RE A GOOD BOY, THOUGH. YOU HAVE A GOOD HEART. I'LL SETTLE FOR YOUR HUMANITY.  
  
"What? No! I don't want to be evil!" Dispite his better and worse judgement, Harry threw one of the skulls lieing about at the face. The thing paused for a tick in the centre of the flames, its empty eye sockets staring out at him, illuminated from within.  
  
The face seemed to tilt upwards, looking at something.  
  
"What?" Harry asked, looking around.  
  
THERE IS A MAN COMMING.  
  
"Who?" Sirius? Harry's heart lept. Sirius could help him figure this out.  
  
KNOTTED, SHOULDER-LENGTH BLACK HAIR, WHITE TUNIC, BROWN ROBES.  
  
"Sirius!" The discription of his hair was a dead giveaway. But his clotheing . . . had Sirius somehow found a new outfit?  
  
DO YOU LIKE SIRIUS?  
  
"Yes! He's my godfather." Harry said happily. Sirius had escaped from his cell.  
  
HE IS GOING TO DIE.  
  
"WHAT?! No!" Harry punched at the face, and felt a rush of prickling pain crawl up the nerves of his arm.  
  
THAT WAS VERY, VERY STUPID, BOY. I MEANT BECAUSE OF THE FIRST TRAP, NOT BECAUSE OF ME.  
  
"Oh!" Harry turned away from the flame, sprinting back the length of the room to the spot underneith the trap door, not caring if he crushed any of the old skulls. "SIRIUS! Sirius! Down here! There's a trap door!" His voice cracked; Harry had to pause breifly to calm down. "Sirius! There's a trap door! You have to sorta find it! Trap door!"  
  
He waited, listening. Sure enough, the faint sound of scratching could be heard, followed after a few moments by the grating sound of rock upon rock. Then a thump, and, "OW! Shit!" and Sirius dropped to the floor in a heep, massaging his stomach.  
  
Harry rushed forward and hugged his godfather around the neck. "That trap door got me in the gut, too," he said, wincing from memories.  
  
Sirius stiffened under Harry's toutch, then, slowly, tousled the boy's hair. "Hiya, kiddo." The hatred he had felt since meeting up with Wesson in his room slowly faded; Potter had saved his life even when Sirius was going to kill him. The idea made him feel strange, somehow. He was going to make the Ministry pay for his years of tourment, but to save Harry Potter was to deny the Dark Lord. Then again, Voldemort never had specifically told him to kill the boy. And he only wanted to join the legions of the Dark for revenge, which he could carry out anyway.  
  
He picked Harry up, looked around, and nearly dropped him. "What the hell is that?"  
  
"The gold thingy is the Crest of Yzix, the fire is a lady-face- thing," Harry explained, and buried his face against Sirius' matted hair, suddenly very tired.  
  
I AM THE GATE KEEPER OF THE NETHERWORLD.  
  
"What do you want?" Sirius asked. The face shifted, staring at him as though this question had not been asked before.  
  
After a moment, it spoke, softly, FREEDOM.  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: Okay! Um, I'll try to get the next chapter up today, too. Stupid Wesson, just the kind of thing he'd do, mistaking goddesses. But while Isis is the goddess of fertility, Yzix is the primordial goddess of darkness, shadow, the unknown, the dead, the netherworld; that sort of thing. 


	12. Part XII: the 12th chapter

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
Harry and his world belong to J K Rowling.  
  
  
  
Thank you so much! Those past reviews are some of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me! Yes, Yzix is made up . . . Sorry if it gets confusing at times; this is the first serious, long story I've ever written, so it's kinda hard to handle the pace of it. There are some loose ends, like under which rock did Wesson and the fake Minister of Deffence hide, and where Maelani and the psychic went. About those; you'll see. If there's anything else I've missed, please tell me so that I can work it into the story to clear it up. Thanks!  
  
Also, no, Sirius hasn't killed anyone . . . yet.  
  
  
  
Chapter XII:  
  
The Dark Lord's Second in Command  
  
  
  
  
  
"Freedom?"  
  
The blue toungs of flame rose in height, expanding as the fire seemed to move closer to the man standing before it on the bone-strewn ground. Sirius stepped back when the flames licked at the rock centimetres away from his boots.  
  
Harry's arms tightened around his neck; Sirius looked back up to find the face watching him closely.  
  
YES. FREEDOM.  
  
"How can I help?" He knew only to well how it felt to be imprisoned.  
  
WHAT WILL YOU GIVE?  
  
"Give? Like what? What do I have to give you?"  
  
FROM YOU? YOUR WORD.  
  
"On what?"  
  
YOU WILL KNOW. NOTHING THAT WILL GO AGAINST YOUR WILL.  
  
Sirius still looked suspicious. Harry nudged him, "That sounds like a fair deal, considering she wanted my humanity."  
  
He got a weird look from his godfather, before Black turned to face the flames again. "Deal."  
  
With a great rumbling, the pillar of blue fire slowly retracted back into the Earth. The Crest dropped to the stone ground with a metalic *pling* that echoed across the empty chambre.  
  
Sirius gently stooped, and pocketed the thing within a flap of his robes. "Okay, kiddo, ready to go home?"  
  
Harry mumbled something indistinct into his godfather's neck.  
  
  
  
The upper level of the fortress was compleatly deserted when the two arrived, showing not a trace of the previous battle. Sirius took his steps warily, blue eyes flicking back and fourth across the deserted hallways, searching for movement. Even the prisoners were silent; not even the most vocal of them shreiked out their tourment into the motionless air.  
  
Sirius stopped, looking around with a more studious gaze. To his left was the passage leading off towards the innards of Azkaban; the High- Security Level. Up ahead and to the right was a stained metal door, leading to . . . to the 'interrogation room', to put it nicely. That left two other hallways, one streaching out to the imidiate right; the other continueing forward.  
  
"I should've paid more attention to that damn skematic," he grumbled, silently cursing himself for getting lost after spending twelve years in this place. "Okay, Harry, what do you think? Right, or strait ahead?"  
  
The warm bundle with his head propped upon his godfather's shoulder made no reply; Sirius suspected that he'd drifted off to sleep during the climp back up to the dungeon.  
  
"Your path depends greatly on where it is you're headed." The voice was cold, and had the quality of a dieing wind through dry leaves. Sirius spun around, squinting into the shadows swarming at the edge of his wandlight. His vision focused- and Black stumbled backwards, feeling his knees go numb. The pale figure of Lord Voldemort melted out of the shadows, followed by at least a dozen Death Eaters.  
  
Sirius clutched his sleeping godson tighter against his chest, instinctly turning sideways to become the smallest possible target he could. He raised the pilfred wand, aiming at the Dark Lord's black-swathed torso.  
  
"Flint tells me that you saved his life," Voldemort said, all the while moving ever closer. Sirius stepped back again, and found himself pressed up against the metal bars of a cell. "You also Stupified two guards and and Auror. Why?"  
  
"I wasn't thinking clearly," Sirius snapped, sounding quite a bit braver than he felt.  
  
"Ah, but I think you were," Voldemort breathed, "as in the old saying, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'."  
  
"If I had it to do over again, I'd've let them kill the little monster." Sirius felt Harry's weight against him shift; he looked down to find the boy blinking sleepily at his surroundings- then jump when he spotted the cloaked figures.  
  
"You also took charge of the battle, gave an order to young Flint here, I believe." Voldemort's cold face took on an icy smile. "We wouldn't have won without you, Black, and for that I thank you. And offer you the long-assumed position of my second in command."  
  
One of the Death Eaters gave a tiny squeak, shifting about uneasily in his robes; Sirius didn't need to see the man's face to know who it was.  
  
Harry looked up at him, green eyes very round and full of questions.  
  
"Didn't you know, Potter?" Voldemort hissed with the air of a coiled serpant, "Your beloved godfather made it possible for us to take control of Azkaban. He helped us win the deciding battle against the guards. The Dementors have left, as you may have gathered from the lack of screams."  
  
Harry stared disbelivingly up at Sirius, begging for reassurance that the man hadn't switched sides in the war, and not knowing what to do if he had. Granted, the Ministry hadn't done him any favours- in fact they had locked him away for many years of his life- but Harry had always associated the MoM with good, and Sirius had a good heart. Or at least he once did.  
  
The look of terrible rage Harry had seen in his godfather's eyes as the guards led him away was the first emotion he had ever remembered seeing in the man's usually blank face; the pain of betrayel magnified again and again for each injustice he had been delt in the name of the Ministry's law.  
  
Suddenly Harry realized with a shock that he didn't blame his godfather if the man decided to turn away from the so-called 'light side' of the magical war- as long as he didn't become a monster, feeding off the pain of others like himself.  
  
"Well, Black?" Voldemort's chilling voice returned, "As my right-hand you could have the freedom denied you by those you trusted, those you served . . . and the power of revenge against those pathetic, incompatent slugs."  
  
Sirius' face was hard; he shifted his gaze from first Voldemort to Harry and back. "And if I refuse?"  
  
"We leave." Voldemort rased his pale hands in a half-shrug. "We leave Azkaban to the Ministry. I have no need for it; my servents imprisoned within its walls weren't . . . as capable of withstanding the Dementors as you were."  
  
"That's it?" Sirius asked skeptically. "No strings attatched?"  
  
"None."  
  
He glanced down at the boy next to him; Harry looked up with his green eyes full of horrified pleading.  
  
"Then I whole-heartedly . . . " Sirius shifted his gaze back to Voldemort, "tell you to go to Hell."  
  
The Dark Lord's smile turned into a sort of demonic grin. "Somehow, I knew you'd say something along those lines." He glanced back towards the Death Eaters, then again at Sirius. "As promised, we'll leave Azkaban in peace. However," his red eyes glittered with malaice, "I never said anything about you and the boy. EXPELLIARMUS!!"  
  
Sirius' wand flew from his hand; Voldemort deftly caught it with a sweep of his other arm. The man turned to run, then-  
  
"Dementorem Reversito!"  
  
Sirius let out a strangled cry, and tumbled forward into a heep, twitching.  
  
"Stop it!" Harry begged. "Leave him alone! It's me you want!"  
  
Voldemort simply favoured him with a chilling smile. "Yes, Potter, you too will die. But first I'm going to teach you all a lesson in decision making. Black here," his voice rose to adress his dark minions as well, "is reliving every moment of pain in his entire pathetic life, along with whatever he was seeing, feeling, or doing at the time. For instance, he might think that he's many miles away, in a fight; or being rushed to a medical centre because of a broken finger.  
  
Pain, you see, is only so bad. Fear, apprehension, hatred, and helplessness; emotions contained in the memories he's experiancing, make the pain ten-fould worse."  
  
Voldemort swept casually across the hard floor, appearantly in no hurry as he made his way towards his prisoners. Harry moved to couver Sirius' head and torso with his own small body, hugging the twitching man as the Dark Lord stopped before them. Lazily, Voldemort raised his wand. "Finite . . . Incantatium."  
  
Sirius collapsed like a broken marianette, sighing in relief, then gently laid a trembling hand on one of Harry's.  
  
"A-Are we going to duel?" Harry asked.  
  
"No," Voldemort's feindesh grin returned, "in fact, Potter, I'm not even going to hurt you."  
  
"You're not?" Harry realized that he sounded somewhat disappointed, and quickly changed his tone of voice. "Why not?"  
  
"Because . . ." Voldemort's eyes sparkled again; the wicked grin on his face fully returned, "Black's going to do it for me. IMPERIO!"  
  
Harry could feel Sirius' breathing take on a more ragged, irregular pace- but knew in his heart that the man was probably too weary from Voldemort's last curse to even attempt fighting this one.  
  
"Sirius?" Harry got to his knees, looking his godfather strait in his vacant eyes. Slowly, the man's eyes focused. He pushed Harry off of him, and turned to Voldemort, lips curled in a sneer.  
  
"Gigd me a w-wand." He shot the boy a nasty look.  
  
"My pleasure."  
  
Sirius snatched the wand out of the air, then turned jerkily around to face Harry, still grinning.  
  
"Sirius, fight it!" Harry tried to back away, but felt the cold wall behind him halt any progress.  
  
Sirius raised the wand, aiming point-blank at the boy's chest.  
  
"Sirius, please!" Harry reached for him, but Sirius jerked away, keeping the wand level.  
  
"I'm going to enjoy this. You have no idea how much . . ." Sirius' voice was low, and had a slightly surreal quality to it. He raised the wand to point at the jagged lightning-shaped scar on Harry's forehead. "Goodby, Harry Potter. TELEPORTUM PHYSIMAGUS!!"  
  
A sort of explosion went off inside Harry's skull- lights blured his vision, and a great hurricane of wind blasted at his ears. He couldn't feel his body. Goodby, Harry Potter. Sirius' last words to him echoed clearly within the malestrom of his dieing brain.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Mum, Sirius Black did not kidnap Harry!" Ron had been trying to tell her that for the past hour and a half the five of them had spent in the Ministry of Magic's waiting area.  
  
"Oh, shut up, Ron," Ginny snapped, "you're just bored! Don't you even care about your best friend?"  
  
"Yes!" Ron snapped back, "I'm just telling you that Sirius did not kidnap him!"  
  
"Ron! Be quiet, please, I need to think." Mrs Weasley had her head in her hands, massaging her temples.  
  
"Mum, do you remember the end of the Tournament last year?" Ron asked, deciding to switch tactics, "When you met him? Do you remember how Harry acted around him?"  
  
"Ron, you're not helping my headache," Mrs Weasley scolded, at the same time the twins asked, "Met who?"  
  
"But do you?" Ron pressed, "And remember how Dumbledore gave him a mission for OUR SIDE?"  
  
"What's he talking about?" one of the twins asked.  
  
"Ron, be quiet, please," their mother complained.  
  
"D-Do you think Harry's . . . dead?" Ginny whispered, looking fearfully at her.  
  
"I don't know, dear."  
  
"He's- " But whatever Fred was going to say, it was imidiatly cut off as the person in question suddenly and without warning materialized in his lap.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: Yep, Siri teleported Harry to the Ministry. More comming soon. Next: Ministry mayham, Peter gets a bashing, and Fudge's vacation gets an early end. 


	13. Part XIII: Where we find out why it's ca...

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
  
  
Voldemort's plan- the part of it we've seen so far- was to break open Azkaban, forge an alliance with the Dementors, and free his servents.  
  
  
  
  
  
Harry and his world belong to J K Rowling.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Chater XIII:  
  
Vengence  
  
  
  
  
  
Sirius had caught them off guard; by the time the Death Eaters and their master found their wands he had turned and dashed down the corridor, praying it led to the exit. He found another hallway branching off the the left, and turned down it. The sound of pounding footsteps behind him echoed to all sides, but Sirius didn't take the time to look.  
  
Left, right, strait, left, left-  
  
Dead end.  
  
"SHIT!" He spun around, staring back up the dim, tourch-lit hallway, searching for his pursuers. Nothing.  
  
Sirius blinked, standing almost frozen, straining his ears against the low-pitched mutterings of the prisoners. Slowly, he let out his bated breath, and drew another. They had lost him.  
  
He raised the wand, preforming a complicated sort of lemniscate in the air. The wandtip flashed golden; Sirius moved it to a position just underneith his lower lip.  
  
"Ministry of Magic," he mumbled, trying to match the tone of the crazed speakers, hoping to disguise his position. "Higher office. Password- Caesar."  
  
There was a crack of static, brought on by the channels of energy he was summoning to work through.  
  
He shifted from one foot to the other, feeling anxiety weave its thorny blossoms within his chest. Why did life have to be so damn complicated? Sirius ran a hand through his matted hair, swallowing several times as he mentally rehersed what he was going to say.  
  
After an infinate time, the wantip brightened, then a burst of golden energy flung itself from the rest and hung before him, pulsating like a miniature sun.  
  
"This had better be important," the Minister of Magic sounded slightly more irked than usual, but then Sirius wasn't exactly in the best of moods, either.  
  
"Keep it down," he hissed, tencing, and strained his sences for the Death Eaters.  
  
"Excuse me?" Fudge snapped, "How dare you speak to me in that way! Who are you? What buisness do you have using a first class channel to bother me in the middle of my daughter's wedding? I gave strict orders to the Ministry not to- "  
  
"Shut it!" Sirius growled, struggling to control his fury, "I don't know why I'm even bothering to speak to you, but I am going to give you some information that will not only save your worthless career, but make you a hero as well. Got it?"  
  
Silence from the glowing ball.  
  
Impatiently, Sirius snapped, "It's your decision, but I sure as Hell don't have a lot of time here."  
  
Finally, Fudge's voice replied slowly, "What kind of information?"  
  
"I am going to give you Lord Voldemort."  
  
On the other end, Fudge recoiled. "What the hell are you talking about?! The Dark Lord- You-Know-Who- he's dead!"  
  
Frustrated, Sirius clenched his jaw, staring blankly off in front of him. His heart was pounding so hard that he was sure the other man could hear it, but when he spoke his voice was even. "Fine. Fine. Then I'll give you S-" He squeezed his blue eyes shut, willing himself to hold in his turmoiled emotions. "Then I'll give you Sirius Black. You like that idea? I bet you do, you fat-headed bugger. He could be dead by the time you get here, but since yer gonna kill'm anyway, what th'hell, eh? By the way- Death Eaters have broken into Azkaban. That's where we are- Azkaban."  
  
Sirius dropped his arm limply to hang at his side, cutting the connection. He was shaking so badly that he could barely stand; his fate was sealed, either by the Ministry or the Death Eaters, depending on who got to him first. But he was, at least, going to die puting Voldemort, Wormtail, and almost a dozen other Death Eaters to justice. Yes, he would die- but it would be for the greater good of the Wizarding world.  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
"Harry!"  
  
"Fred?" Harry tilted his head back to look at the twin.  
  
"George, actually," said the older boy.  
  
"You are not, I am," the other twin stated, while Mrs Weasley snatched Harry off of the first's lap and gave him a tight hug.  
  
"Harry! What on Earth . . ." she stopped when she spotted the triangular emblem sewn to his right sleeve; a bird of prey caught in mid flight, with the word AZKABAN below in red letters. "You were in Azkaban!"  
  
"Azkaban?" Fred stopped quarreling with his twin to stare at Harry. "Ah, Azkaban: my future home."  
  
"Fred, that's not funny," his mother scolded. "Harry, dear, what happened? Did they catch Sirius Black?"  
  
". . .Yes . . ." He had a funny look on his face, then, "Oh, no!"  
  
"What? They caught him?" Ron demanded.  
  
"No- I mean yes . . . er-" Harry glanced at his surroundings, trying to take it all in. Sirius had fought off the curse . . . and was now in terrible trouble by the Death Eaters. "We have to save him!" He grabbed Ron by the front of his robes, "Come on!"  
  
"Harry, hold still," Mrs Weasley ordered, looking around for a security guard; someone to alert about his reappearence.  
  
"Hey, Harry!" Fred waited to continue until he'd caught the boy's attention,  
  
"There's a reward out for you, know?"  
  
"10.000 galleons, too!" George chimed in.  
  
"I DON'T CARE!" Harry snapped. He just wanted to save Sirius, but hadn't the faintest on how to go about it. Who would help?  
  
Then he saw- standing there, to the left of a balding man in purple robes.  
  
"HEY!" Harry shouted, waving his arm frantically to get the man's attention. After a bit the red-cloaked guard spotted him, and worked his way through the croud.  
  
"Deneb. Hello," the man who had been Harry's guard nodded faintly at Mrs Weasley. "What can I do you for?"  
  
"Please, sir- my . . . Sirius," he ammended, flicking a gaze at the Weasleys. "He's in trouble. In Azkaban. Death Eaters."  
  
But the guard was shaking his head. "Deneb, Black's- I'm sorry, but, well, he's gone. We were too late-"  
  
"No! Listen!" Harry noticed that his hands were quaking, and managed to calm himself. "Sirius is alive. He saved me, and now he's in trouble. You have to help, please!"  
  
The red-cloaked guard gave him a long, scrutinizing look, then finally nodded.  
  
"What's going on?" Ginny whined.  
  
"Are we goin' to Azkaban?" Fred and George chorused.  
  
Mrs Weasly sighed and dropped her head into her calloused hands, giving up trying to understand. "I can't believe we're going to rescue Sirius Black from Death Eaters," she muttered, and massaged her temples again.  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
"Where did you send him?!" Voldemort grabbed his prisoner by the neck, lifting him off the ground. It hadn't taken long to find Sirius Black; the man couldn't disapperate from within Azkaban's walls, nor were there any avalable hiding spaces in the winding hallways.  
  
Black grasped at the Dark Lord's ghostlike hand with his own, trying to pry the long, slender fingers from his throat.  
  
Voldemort tightened his hold. "Where did you send him?"  
  
"It . . . dosen't matter, Mouldy-man-Voldie," Sirius gasped out painfully, struggling for air. "I'm not . . . going to . . . " His sentence fell apart, and Sirius dug his nails into Voldemort's hand, kicking out desperately.  
  
Voldemort tossed him away, face twisted in a look of disgust. "Why are you standing up for the Ministry when they ripped you life apart?" He grabbed Sirius by the collor of his tunic and threw him against the wall, smiling inwardly when the younger man's head cracked against the hard metal.  
  
"I'm not," Sirius snarled. "If it were up to me, I'd BE your bloody second!" The Dark Lord's grip released slightly, and Sirius pushed his momentary adventage of surprise, "Yeah, that's right, you murdering bugger! I'd KILL the bloody Minister of Magic myself. I'd laugh while I twisted a knife deep into his cold heart," his voice had become low, course, and ominous; his eyes glittered strangely in the half-light. "I'd LOVE the position of your right hand man. I'd LOVE it. I'd help you turn the Ministry of Magic into a smouldering ruin, and shove the irony of their creation right into their dieing faces. The weavers caught in their own web. But you know why I won't? Because I would trade a life of vengence for death and remembrance of Harry any day."  
  
Voldemort slammed him into the wall again, then steped back, letting the man sink to the floor, coughing.  
  
"So be it." He raised his wand, taking aim at the shrinking man before him. "AVADA KEDAV- !"  
  
"EXPELLIARMUS!"  
  
Voldemort's wand flew from his hand; Sirius raised his head, touching a finger gingerly to the blood trickling from a corner of his mouth. People were so afraid of Death Eaters, he though dryly. But the Azkaban guards had been worse.  
  
"Freeze! All of you!" Between his long fringe, Sirius could barely make out nine silver-robed Aurors force their way into the gloomy room. He lowered his head again, disappointed; Avada Kedavera was supposed to be quick and painless. Dementor's Kiss was neither.  
  
"All right, Black, hold it. Don't make a move." A male voice commanded. Sirius had no intention of going anywhere; they'd catch him before he'd get half a metre.  
  
"I said don't move!" the same voice snapped. I'm not, Sirius thought, irritated- then looked up.  
  
"I believe you've got us confused," Voldemort sneered, flicking a glance at the man curled on the floor. "He's Black."  
  
"Don't tell me yarns," the Auror snarled. "I can tell from here that you've tourtured that poor man." He motioned, and a female Auror strode quickly to Sirius, putting her arms tenitively onto his bony shoulders. Sirius winced, and she let go.  
  
"Are you all right? Anything broken?"  
  
"No . . .don't think so," he mumbled. " 'tis a reflex."  
  
" 'Reflex'?" She looked back at the man whom Sirius supposed was in charge.  
  
"Yes." Voldemort cut in, his sneer turning into a smirk. "Most likely psycological damage; though I can't vouch for any wounds he might have."  
  
"Who are you, then?" the first Auror snapped.  
  
"Me?" Voldemort's face turned blank. "I am an illusion, summoned by Black here to give confidance to his Death Eaters."  
  
"That's not true!" Sirius bit out, tencing against an inevitable blow from the woman next to him. It didn't come, and he mentally scolded himself for expecting Aurors to behave like sadistic guards.  
  
"It's all right," the woman said, putting a hand on Sirius' shoulder. He jumped again, and she quickly pulled away. "Sir, may I ask your name?"  
  
"He's Sirius Anthony Black," Pettigrew's voice piped up, quickly coming to the aid of his master.  
  
" 'Antony'," Sirius snapped at him, annoyed- then mentally kicked himself, and hard.  
  
"HE'S Sirius Black?" the head Auror scoffed, turning back to Voldemort. "Than who're you?"  
  
"He's Master," Sirius replied, mimicking Pettigrew's simper.  
  
"See? He admitted he's a Death Eater." Peter called.  
  
"Shut up, you fat squib!" Sirius hissed. "I'd rather kiss a Dementor than- "  
  
"I'm not a squib!" Peter raised his wand. "CRUCIO!"  
  
"Finite Incantatium! EXPELLIARMUS!" The Auror caught Peter's wand out of midair, while the others went about disarming, tieing, and unmasking the remaining Death Eaters.  
  
"Lucious Malfoy! MacNair!" Sirius couldn't see through the dim light and Aurors, but decided that both the afforementioned were most deffinatly expelled from their jobs at the Ministry.  
  
"What's your name?" the Auror next to him asked soothingly, brushing back some of the sweat-drenched tangles hanging before Sirius' face. He turned his face away, letting his matted hair recouver his features.  
  
"Wesson," he mumbled numbly, trying not to move his bleeding lip. "Nathanial Wesson."  
  
"Okay, Mr Wesson, I'd like you to answer a few- "  
  
"No." Sirius wished he knew sign-language, and that the Auror did as well. "I need to speek to Wesson."  
  
"Can you explain? Who is this Nathanial Wesson?"  
  
"He's the bloke who sent me here." He works for NeuroTech, Sirius added mentally. NeuroTech. It's not that difficult- say NeuroTech. "He works . . . for . . ." NeuroTech! Sirius put his head in his hands, mentally cursing.  
  
Another Auror stormed over, and grabbed Sirius roughly by his matted hair, yanking his face upwards.  
  
"What are you doing?!" the female Auror rose as well, and stopped when she saw his face. "S . . . irius Black?" she asked tenetively.  
  
"Appearently those Death Eaters were telling the truth," the other snapped.  
  
"Why would they hurt him? Isn't he their leader?" She studied the prisoner's beaten face.  
  
"I don't know. We'll have to ask them later. Now, though," he motioned, and with the sweep of his arm a black-robed figure entred the chambre. Immidiatly Sirius recognized what it was.  
  
"No . . . please," he whispered, unable to make his voice any louder. "Pettigrew, Peter Pettigrew . . ."  
  
"Will be avenged," the Auror holding him said harshly.  
  
"No, you don't underst-" the Dementor wrapped its freezing fingers around his throat, cutting off the rest of his sentence. It lifted him up off the ground; Sirius hung limply, staring terrified as the creature lowered its hood, revealing rotted flesh, and a compleat lack of eyes. Its mouth opened, exposing an infinate well of darkness inside. In a swift movement, the Dementor clamped its jaws over Sirius'.  
  
He felt icy stabs of pain on either side of his mouth, and then-  
  
It was worse then Crucio.  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
"Where is he?!" Harry cried desperatly, searching his gaze over the dim halls of Azkaban.  
  
"Hey, look!" Ron pointed at a heavy door down one corridor, and a thin beam of light comming from undernieth the crack. "Let's try in there!"  
  
Harry darted to the door, grasped the handle, and slowly managed to pull it open. Whatever he had expected, it wasn't the sight before him. The group of Death Eaters were bound and guarded by a half-dozen Aurors, and-  
  
"NO!" Harry thrust his hand into a pocket of his robe, then remembered that he didn't have a wand. "Ron, gimme your wand!"  
  
"I don't have it!"  
  
Harry felt something inside him break. He rushed at the Dementor and grabbed his godfather by the back of his brown robe, trying to pull him away. An Auror grabbed him, and Harry gently picked the wand out of the man's hand.  
  
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!!"  
  
The Dementor exploded. There was nothing left of it, save wisps of blackness quickly dispersing in the air. Sirius dropped stiffly to the ground.  
  
Harry wriggled out of the Auror's grasp and rushed to his godfather, taking the man's head onto his lap. "Sirius?"  
  
"Oops, too late," a taunting, snivle of a voice broke the silence that had decended. Harry recognized it immidiatly.  
  
"WORMTAIL!" He gently let Sirius slide to the floor again, and jumped to his feet. "Pettigrew, you bastard! This is all your fault!"  
  
He threw himself on the man, pounding him with his fists as hard as he could. "How could you!?" Harry screamed, and felt the man's nose break under his punches. "How could you murder your best friends!? My father! My mother! And now Sirius!"  
  
Harry was wrenched off of the Death Eater, and he clawed at the man holding him, beyond thought. "I hate you! Let me go!"  
  
"Harry! HARRY!"  
  
Harry looked up, face twisted and streaked with tears. He stared at the man numbly, in shock from the previous events.  
  
"Harry! It's okay; you saved my life." Sirius pulled the boy against him, gently tousling his already disheveled hair. "Another few seconds and I'd've died, but . . ." He tilted Harry's face up to look at him. "I can't believe you're here. Why are you here?"  
  
"I . . ." Harry burried his face in his godfather's robe.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: had to cut it short; Nick wanted the computer again. I hope this didn't turn out as stupid- I didn't have much time to go over it. Next chapter: the reapperence of Wesson, among other things. 


	14. Part XIV: more

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
Yeah, the Dementor's Kiss won't kill, but what do you think they do with them afterwards? He's as good as dead.  
  
  
  
Harry and his world belong to J K Rowling.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter XIV (con't)  
  
Vengence  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"Harry . . ." Mrs Weasley looked uncertainly at Sirius, who had picked the exhausted boy up into his arms.  
  
"Mr Justin O'Brenner," one of the Aurors, a lean, fair-haired man with a tripple star emblazoned on his collor, said by way of explanation as he strode up to the red-cloaked guard. "I demand to know who you people are, and what, exactly, you think you're doing."  
  
"Wondering the exact same thing myself," replied the guard, glancing at the arrested Death Eaters, and Sirius.  
  
"Hey . . . " Fred looked around, then asked, "Where'd that tall fellow get to? The pale one."  
  
Harry jerked from his light daze of blissful rest, scanning the room. Fred was right- Voldemort was gone.  
  
"We'll worry about him later. We've got the Dark Lord's second-in- command." O'Brenner said, voice filled with the sound of supressed excitement.  
  
"No, you haven't," Sirius said flatly, noting that Peter, too, had managed to get away- probably as a rat. As if they'd listen to him, though. One way or another, this would end here today.  
  
"Who's the boy?- All of you, identify yourselves or face charges." commanded a wild-haired, Welsh-accented Auror.  
  
"Ron Weasley."  
  
"Gred Weasley."  
  
"Forge Weasley."  
  
"Gin- Virginia Weasley."  
  
"Molly Weasley."  
  
"Ben Tallac- guard."  
  
"Harry Potter."  
  
"THE Harry Potter?" O'Brenner looked impressed, while the guard looked startled. He looked at Harry, thought about it, then decided to ask about the boy's deception later.  
  
"Black, put Potter down or I'll turn you into ash." This was said by the woman who had, minutes earlier, been trying to sooth his wounds. Harry clung to his godfather's neck; the man gently unwound him and lowered him to the ground. Imidiatly five Aurors surrounded Sirius, aiming their wands at the various vital points of his body.  
  
"Now," O'Brenner continued, looking quizzically at them, "what, might I to ask, are you folks doing here?"  
  
"I'm here to rescue my godfather," Harry answered forcefully, sounding quite a bit tougher than he felt. "Sirius is innocent."  
  
Wispering ensured as the Aurors, and the Weasleys, argued his statement over.  
  
"If I may say something, please," Mrs Weasley spoke up, catching the room's attention. "Thank you. I actually met Mr Black at the end of the Tri- Wizard Tournament last year, and- "  
  
"Mum!" Fred and George looked betrayed. "You never told us!"  
  
"Because do you remember when Harry was in the hospital wing? Black was by his side throughout most of the time. When Harry awoke, Dumbledore gave Black a mission, talking about 'being on the same side now'. I believe Sirius Black may have rejoined our side."  
  
"Which is why the Death Eaters went after him!" put in an Auror, looking triumphant.  
  
"Elementary, my dear Dr Watson," a voice sprang up from the back, near the iron stairs that lead to the exit. "But actually, Black is simply acting out a mission that requires him to play good for a while."  
  
Nathanial Wesson strode forward, looking disgusted as he passed the group of unconsious, magically bound dark wizards.  
  
"Well, Black? Do either you or the kid have it?" He looked expectantly at them.  
  
"Have what? Who are you?" the Welsh wizard snapped.  
  
"I have orders directly from Minister Reiton," Wesson said haughtilly, and Sirius couldn't even argue the point from underneith the bewitchment.  
  
He scowled instead. "What if we don't?"  
  
"You do," the man glared.  
  
"We don't. The passageway was blocked off." Sirius kept his face a mask, hoping that the Crest wasn't sticking out of his pocket even while he spoke.  
  
"Y-you don't? We'll see." He beckoned, and both Dr Maelani and Sonna Ibse stepped out of the shadowed entranceway.  
  
"Hello, Siri, nice to see you're up and about," Maelani said coldly.  
  
"Don't call me 'Siri', Mae-mae. Bonjour, madam Ibse, ca va?"  
  
"Je suis bien." She wasn't looking at him, but at the spot where the solid weight of the Crest pressed against his thigh, hidden benieth his blood-stained, white tunic.  
  
"Well?" Wesson snapped, impatient.  
  
"I told you," Sirius prayed that Ibse would go along, "we couldn't get to it. Sorry."  
  
"Well?" Wesson repeated, looking at the psychic.  
  
" 'e doosent 'have it. 'e is telling ze trus."  
  
"DAMNIT!" The normally cold, collected Dr Maelani looked ready to kill. In a rage, she struck the toe of a velvet, high-heeled boot into a point just inside Sirius' left thigh, making that leg collapse out from undernieth him. By pure accident, the impact also caused the precariously hidden Crest to topple from his pocket, landing on the cold stone at Wesson's feet.  
  
Maelani went for it, but Wesson snatched it up first, quickly tucking it into a black metal box. "You lied to me," he accused. "That was a very, very stupid thing to do."  
  
  
  
"What's going-" the head Auror started to say, but was cut off by Sirius Black.  
  
"Wesson, fine, you've got your trinket. Now please, take Harry. Take him back to the Ministry, and give me that damned potion." His voice was quite calm, dispite his words. It was as if he were suddenly given the gift of clarevoyance; he could see his life mapped out before him, twisting off into many new paths with each decision he made. Now, all the paths led to only one end.  
  
Wesson didn't even glance at the boy before replying coldly, "There is only enough room on my ship for three. Myself, Maelani, and Minister Reiton. The boy will have to wait until the Ministry lets down the wards keeping this place isolated. Since Black was announced to be here, Fudge felt it nessicary to cut off any charms allowing access to the outside world."  
  
Aiming his wand at the man, Wesson continued in a casual tone, "Sorry, Black; I know you were promised a quick death, but seeing as you tried to swindle me I think I'll just leave you to die at the hands of these Aurors. You can pray that they'll not take their time going about it, but it really doesn't matter to me. Good-bye; and good-bye, Ms Ibse." With a jaunty salute, Wesson turned on his heel and exited the chambre with Dr Maelani.  
  
"You can't let 'im leave-" Ibse protested, but was silenced with a flick of Maelani's wand.  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: mind's running a blank; more later. Please give me all questions and comments if you have an idea on what would make the story better. 


	15. Part XV: Yzix uses owl post

The Greater Good  
  
by Kiana Unei  
  
  
  
  
  
Sorry about the cliff hanger, but I was struck with a bit of writer's block, and hadn't the faintest on what to do after they left.  
  
  
  
J K Rowling owns Harry and his world.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter XVI:  
  
His Word  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Mrs Weasley sighed gently as she retrieved the filthy dishes from the round dining table, carrying them cautiously back to the kitchen. Obviously, she could have done this through the use of magic, but right now she just wanted to work with her hands.  
  
'Oh, please let the evening go well,' she remembered pleading to herself hours ago, before their guests arived. Ever since Headmaster Albus Dumbledore had informed her of his plans, she had been strung out in a fit of anxiety; not exactly the best of moods to possess during a visitation. When she had explained it all to Arthur, her husband had all but pulled himself bald trying to come up with an excuse, or at least a decent plan to handle the . . . awkward situation. Awkward, yes . . . but then again, they HAD met him breifly before.  
  
Of course, when the rest of the family found out, the twins Fred and George jumped from the couch to their feet, yelling out an excited, simultanious 'Really?'. Ginny had chewed nervously on her fingernails, a habit she had aquired sometime during the previous week- but Ron looked only slightly startled. Understandable, of course, as he had met the man several times before, and apparently considered him normal enough.  
  
When the sitiuation had been explained, the plan was laid out: Clean house. Be on your best behaviour. Pick up any sharp objects and hide them. Yes, dining utenciles too.  
  
"Can I bring a sac to vomit in?" Fred had joked.  
  
"Sirius doesn't look like his picture anymore, remember?" Ron scoffed, smirking. The family relaxed slightly after that. "And he's not nutters." The tension evaporated all together.  
  
At six o'clock, a solid RAP at the front door anounced the arrival of their guests. Ron had pulled open the door, and allowed the two entrence.  
  
"Hi," Harry had greeted, peering around the taller boy at the rest of the Weasleys.  
  
"Hello," Sirius Black had offered, taking in his new surroundings. Nodding, he adressed them; "Ron. Mrs, Mr Weasley."  
  
Mr Weasley cleared his throat. "Ah- hello. Come in?"  
  
Harry was already inside and standing on the worn purple carpet, letting his soaked boots drain into the absorbant material. He shook his cloak free of snow, and hung it neatly from a peg on the lopsided rack. Black entred after him, stepping into the light and brushing back the thick black hood of his cloak.  
  
The face undernieth was indeed nothing of resemblence to the prisoner's photo; he was clean, filled out after years of starvation, and had a slight, warm smile brushed across his otherwise neutral face. Only his eyes betrayed the existence of a tourmented soul burried within.  
  
"My, is it snowing out?" Arthur had taken a daring stab at conversation, closing the door behind his guests. Black was watching him, shrinking away when the other man's hand brushed his heavy cloak.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"I see." Arthur searched his mind for something else to say, to no avail.  
  
They stood looking akwardly at each other, until Harry took a deep breath, "Sirius, this is Mr and Mrs Weasley, the twins are Fred and George, the one hiding behind Mrs Weasley is Ginny, and you know Ron. Everyone, this is my godfather, Sirius."  
  
"Hi." Was the general, mumbled greeting.  
  
"Oh, really!" Harry said after a moment, exasperated, and took his godfather's gloved hand. "Come on, I'll show you Ron's Dreaded Room of Doom."  
  
"Yeah!" Ron put in, hurrying up the stairs to lead the way, "And Ginny's Wall of Bogies."  
  
"I don't have a 'Wall of Bogies!'" Ginny snapped, comming out of hiding. "And Ron, your room is a mess!"  
  
"Like Harry said, my 'Room of Doom'," her brother called over his shoulder.  
  
"Mr Black," Mrs Weasley licked her lips nervously, "would you like me to take your coat?"  
  
The man paused halfway up the steps, turning 'round to face her. His face softened, and he managed a weak but nonetheless kind smile. "I . . . I'll keep it on, if you don't mind?"  
  
"Of course not, go ahead." She watched as he nodded once, then ascended the remaineder of the stairs.  
  
Clasping her hands together, Mrs Weasley wandered back into the kitchen to attend her preparations. Arthur followed.  
  
"Well, Molly," he sighed, and leaned against a countertop, "he looks better. Almost didn't recognize him."  
  
She mumbled a reply, and shooed him away from her cooking.  
  
"But what I didn't understand- who was that Wesson character? He wasn't at the trial- "  
  
"Arthur, please," Mrs Weasley turned to look him in the eyes. "Let's try to have a nice evening."  
  
"I just don't think it's fair-"  
  
"It's what the Minister decided. It's only four months. Now, do you want rice, or greens with supper?"  
  
"Greens. Molly- "  
  
"Arthur, let it go. Let's try to make the evening as pleasent as possible." She went to work summoning a dish from thin air, and filling it with freashly cut salad. "Take this to the table, will you, dear?"  
  
Arthur did as told, resting the bowl between the cranberrys and roasted foul. He started when he noticed he wasn't alone.  
  
"Sorry." Black was looking at him from the doorway, face as blank as it had been during his trial.  
  
"All right," Mr Weasley assured him, and himself. "No harm done. How are you feeling?"  
  
"Fine." His hands were still quaking from behind his black gloves; the aftereffect of the powerful truth serum the Ministry had dumped into his system.  
  
"I'm just putting the salad down," Arthur said, somehow feeling the need to justify himself to his guest. Black's pale eyes wandered briefly to rest on the dish, then returned to the other man.  
  
"I'm sorry about . . . what happened." Arthur sighed, resting his hands on the back of a chair.  
  
"Don't be. My fault." the man's voice sounded rough, and very heavy. "Just four months. No Dementors; they've joined with Voldemort."  
  
Arthur shuddered invoulentarily, imagining the cold, forbidding island fortress, and what it would be like imprisoned there.  
  
"I guess in the end, it would have been better had I never escaped in the first place." Black slided wearily into a chair, resting his hands on the table and looking blankly at them. "Wormtail wouldn't have escaped, Voldemort wouldn't be back, and the Dementors would still be under control of the Ministry."  
  
"And Harry would still be an orphan," Mr Weasley pointed out. "And You-Know-Who would probably have returned anyway. Many are still loyal to him.  
  
"Look at it this way: You were found guilty of becoming an illigal Animagus- eight months in Azkaban, escaping Azkaban- fifty years, aiding Death Eaters- five years, and stupifying two guards and an Auror- three years in Azkaban. A total of fifty-eight years and eight months.  
  
"But for saving Harry's life, and the fact that you were wrongly convicted of murder, the Minister of Justice knocked it down to just four months- one for each crime. See?"  
  
The man made an indistinct noise.  
  
Arthur started to continue, but was interrupted by a tap at the front door. Curious, he opened it to find only a white envelope laying gently at his feet, half-hidden by the falling snow. He retrieved it, and walked back inside. "Sirius? Letter for you."  
  
Black took it from him, intrigued. "Who from?"  
  
"No idea. Maybe the Ministry?"  
  
The younger man grimaced. "Hope not. I've had enough of those jackarses for one lifetime." He tore the brim away, fished out the letter, and read the electric-blue lettering.  
  
  
  
  
  
I'm calling in my debt. You gave me your word. The Crest will alow you access into the Netherworld. Use the Crest to set me free. If you go back on your word, I will instead find payment in the boy's humanity. 


End file.
